f^t. 


A 


.\^ 


^m 


IMAGE  EVALUATION 
TEST  TARGET  (MT-3) 


1.0     f.^^ 

^  1^    12.2 


I.I 


m  m 


(■-- 

L25  ||  1.4   1  1.6 

^ 

6"     

► 

O^A 


^m    ^^. 


>J 


^j>* 
■> 


Hi0togra[M] 

Sdences 

Corporation 


•1>^ 


<^ 


23  WBT  MAM  STMIT 

WiUTIR,N.Y.  MSM 
(71*)  172-4503 


ij^ 


6^ 


\^^ 


<!^ 


^ 


\ 


;\ 


.   'O 


^ 
R 


CIHM/ICMH 

Microfiche 

Series. 


CIHM/ICMH 
Collection  de 
microfiches. 


Canadian  Institute  for  IHistorical  Microraproductions  /  Institut  Canadian  de  microreproductions  historiques 


Technical  and  Bibliographic  Notes/Notes  techniques  et  bibliographiqueft 


The  institute  has  attempted  to  obtain  the  best 
original  copy  available  for  filming.  Features  of  this 
copy  which  may  be  bibiiographically  unique, 
which  may  alter  any  of  the  images  in  the 
reproduction,  or  which  may  significantly  change 
the  usual  method  of  filming,  are  checlced  below. 


n    Coloured  covers/ 
Couverture  de  couleur 


I      I    Covers  damaged/ 


Couverture  endommag6e 


□   Covers  restored  and/or  laminated/ 
Couverture  restaurAe  et/ou  pelliculie 


D 


D 
D 


D 


Cover  title  missing/ 

Le  titre  de  couverture  manque 


I      I    Coloured  maps/ 


Cartes  g^ographiques  en  couleur 


□    Coloured  ink  (i.e.  other  than  blue  or  black)/ 
Encre  de  couleur  (i.e.  autre  que  bleue  ou  noire) 

I      I    Coloured  plates  and/or  illustrations/ 


D 


Planches  et/ou  illustrations  en  couleur 

Bound  with  other  material/ 
Reli6  avec  d'autres  documents 

Tight  binding  may  cause  shadows  or  distortion    5 
along  interior  margin/ 

La  re  iiure  serr6e  peut  causer  de  i'ombre  ou  de  la 
distortion  le  long  de  la  marge  int6rieure 

Blank  leaves  added  during  restoration  may 
appear  within  the  text.  Whenever  possible,  these 
have  been  omitted  from  filming/ 
II  se  peut  que  certaines  pages  birnches  ajouties 
iors  d'une  restauration  apparaisscnt  dans  le  texte, 
mais,  iorsque  cela  6tait  possible,  ces  pages  n'ont 
pas  6t6  fiimdes. 

Additional  comments:/ 
Commentaires  suppl^mentaires; 


L'Institut  a  microfilmi  le  meilleur  exemplaire 
qu'il  iui  a  6t6  possible  de  se  procurer.  Les  details 
de  cet  exemplaire  qui  sont  peut-6tre  unlcjues  du 
point  de  vue  bibliographlque,  qui  peuvent  modifier 
une  image  reproduite,  ou  qui  peuvent  exiger  une 
modification  dans  la  methods  normale  de  fiimage 
sont  indiquAs  ci-dessous. 


n 


D 


Coloured  pages/ 
Pages  de  couleur 


□    Pages  damaged/ 
Pages  endommag^es 

□   Pages  restored  and/or  laminated/ 
Pages  restauries  et/ou  peliiculAes 

I — I   Pages  discoloured,  stained  or  foxed/ 


Pages  d^coiories,  tachet6es  ou  piqu6es 

Pages  detached/ 
Pages  ddtach^es 

Showthrough> 
Transparence 

Quality  of  prir 

Qualit^  indgaie  de  i'impression 

Includes  supplementary  materit 
Comprend  du  materiel  suppl^mentaire 

Only  edition  available/ 
Seule  Edition  disponible 


I      I  Pages  detached/ 

r~~|  Showthrough/ 

I      I  Quality  of  print  varies/ 

I      I  Includes  supplementary  material/ 

I — I  Only  edition  available/ 


Pages  wholly  or  partially  obscured  by  errata 
slips,  tissues,  etc..  have  been  refilmed  to 
ensure  the  best  possible  imaae/ 
Les  pages  totalement  ou  partiellement 
obscurcies  par  un  feuillet  d'errata.  une  pelure. 
etc..  ont  6t6  film6es  d  noiweau  de  iagon  A 
obtenir  la  meilleure  image  possible. 


Tl 
to 


Ti 

P< 
0I 
fil 


O 

bi 
t^ 
si 
01 
fil 
si 
01 


Tl 
si 

T! 

N 

d{ 
ei 
bi 
ri 
ri 

IT 


This  item  is  filmed  at  the  reduction  ratio  checked  below/ 

Ce  document  est  filmA  au  taux  de  rMuction  indiqut  ci-dessous. 

10X  14X  18X  22X 


n/ 


12X 


16X 


20X 


26X 


30X 


24X 


28X 


32X 


The  copy  film«d  h«r«  hm  b««n  reproduced  thenke 
to  the  generoeity  of: 

Douglas  Library 
Queen's  University 


L'exempiaire  film*  fut  reproduit  grice  A  la 
g^nArosit*  de: 

Douglas  Library 
Queen's  University 


The  images  appearing  here  are  the  best  quality 
possible  considering  the  condition  and  legibility 
of  the  originel  copy  and  in  keeping  with  the 
filming  contract  specifications. 


Original  copies  in  printed  paper  covers  are  filmed 
beginning  with  the  front  coym  and  ending  on 
the  last  page  with  a  printed  or  illustrated  impres- 
sion, or  the  back  cover  when  appropriate.  All 
other  original  copies  are  filmed  beginning  on  the 
first  page  with  a  printed  or  illustrated  impres- 
sion, and  ending  on  the  last  page  with  a  printed 
or  illustrated  impression. 


The  last  recorded  frame  on  each  microfiche 
shall  contain  the  symbol  — ^>  (meaning  "CON- 
TINUED"), or  the  symbol  y  (meaning  "END"), 
whichever  applies. 

Maps,  plates,  charts,  etc.,  may  be  filmed  at 
different  reduction  ratios.  Those  too  large  to  be 
entirely  included  in  one  exposure  are  filmed 
beginning  in  the  upper  left  hand  corner,  left  to 
right  and  top  to  bottom,  as  many  frames  as 
required.  The  following  diagrams  illustrate  the 
method: 


Les  images  suivantes  ont  AtA  reproduites  avec  le 
plus  grand  soin,  compte  tenu  de  la  condition  et 
de  la  nettett  de  l'exempiaire  fiimi,  et  en 
conformity  avec  les  conditions  du  contrat  de 
filmage. 

Les  exemplaires  originaux  dont  la  couverture  en 
papier  est  ImprimAe  sont  filmte  en  commengant 
par  le  premier  plat  et  en  terminant  soit  par  la 
derni^re  page  qui  comporte  une  empreinte 
^'impression  ou  d'illustration,  so*,  par  le  second 
plat,  selon  le  cas.  Tous  les  autres  exemplaires 
originaux  sont  fiimte  en  commenpant  par  la 
premiAre  page  qui  comporte  une  empreinte 
d'impression  ou  d'illustration  et  en  terminant  par 
la  derniire  page  qui  comporte  une  telle 
emprtointe. 

Un  des  symboles  suivants  apparaftra  sur  la 
dernlAre  image  de  cheque  microfiche,  selon  ie 
cas:  le  symbols  -^  signifie  "A  SUIVRE  ",  le 
symbols  V  signifie  "FIN  ". 

Les  cartes,  planches,  tableaux,  etc.,  peuvent  Atre 
fiimte  A  des  tsux  de  rMuction  diff6rents. 
Lorsque  ie  document  est  trop  grsnd  pour  Atre 
reproduit  en  un  seul  clichA,  il  est  film*  A  partir 
de  Tangle  supArieur  gauche,  de  gauche  A  droite, 
et  de  haut  on  bas,  en  prenant  le  nombre 
d'images  nAcesssire.  Les  diagrammes  suivants 
illustrent  la  mAthode. 


1 

2 

3 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

•      ,^  1^^  -^  i ,  i-A  tV 


HUMBOLDT  LIBRARY 


or 


Popular  Sgienge  Literature. 


Ko.  33.  Vol.  II.]        NEW  YORK:    J.  FITZGPiRALD  &  CO.     [Fifteen  Cents. 

June   1882.  Entered  at  the  New  York  Post-Oflict  as  Second-Class  Matter.  $1.^0  per  Year 

(la    fumbers.) 

VIGNETTES  FROM  NATURE. 

BY  GRANT  ALLEN. 

AUTHOR   OF    "THE    BVOLUTIONIST   AT   I.ARUK." 


Prefatory  Noik. 


These  little  essays  have  no  pretension  to  be  any  more  than  popular  expositions  of  current 
evolutionary  thought,  occasionally  their  author's,  oftener  still  other  people's  ;  but  they  may 
perhaps  do  a  little  good  in  spreading  more  widely  a  knowledge  of  those  great  biological  and 
cosmical  doctrines  which  are  now  revolutionizing  the  European  mind,  and  which  owe  their 
origin  to  the  epoch,making  works  of  Charles  Darwin  and  Herbert  Spencer.  G.  A. 

very  near  the  great  house  itself,  where 
children  and  visitors  have  long  been 
wont  to  pet  and  caress  them.  There 
are,  indeed,  few  more  interesting  rel- 
ics of  the  past  in  England  than  these 
stray  lierds  of  dumb  creatures,  rem- 
nants of  the  native  woodland  tribes 
which  once  spread  over  the  whole 


FALLOW  DEER. 

TJni>ek  the  great  horse-chestnut  trees 
in  Woolney  Park  the  broad  circle  of 
shade  is  now  pleasant  enough  to  at- 
tract the  does  and  fawns  of  the  fallow 
deer,  who  lie  in  pretty  groups  upon 
the  grass,  or  stray  about,  browsing, 
beneath  the  heavy  boughs  thick  with 
scented  blossom.  To-day  I  have 
brought  out  a  few  scraps  of  bread  in 
my  pocket,  and  the  fawns  are  tame 
enough  to  come  and  eat  it  from  my 
hand  on  the  open;  for  they  have  less 
fear  of  man  here  than  in  any  other 

Slaco  I  know  of,  except  perhaps  in  the 
[agdalen  grounds  at  Oxford.  They 
I  will  even  allow  a  favorite  acquaintance 
[to  stroke  and  fondletheir  pretty  heads. 
|No  doubt  the  long  domestication  of 
their  ancestors  has  made  them,  natu- 
rally prone  to  strike  up  a  friend- 
^ship  with  human  companions,  just  as 
lis  the  case  with  kittens  and  puppies; 
land  at  Woolney  they  have  always  lived 


well-timi?ered  country,  and  which 
now  carry  us  back  in  mind  past  the 
days  of  Kobin  Hood  and  of  William 
the  Red  to  the  old  forestine  life  of  the 
Celtic  and  Buskarian  aborigines.  For 
though  some  good  authorities  will 
have  it  that  the  fallow  deer  date  back 
no  earlier  in  this  country  than  the 
days  of  the  Romans,  who  are  said  to 
have  introduced  them  for  their  plea- 
sure grouiids,  I  myself  can  hardly 
doubt  that  they  are  a  part  of  our  old 
indigenous  fauna,  Avhich  now  sarviyes 
only  in  a  few  enclosed  preserves.  The 
wild  white  cattle  at  Chillingham,  the 
red  deer  on  the  Scotch  moors,  and 
these  pretty  does  aiid  fawns  in  Wool- 
ney Park,  all  trace  back  their  aaoestry, 


r 

i 

I 


S 


;5642 


\ 


mm 


2  [458] 


VIQNETTE8  PROM  NATURE. 


I  believe,  to  the  time  when  England 
was  clad  by  one  almost  unbroken 
sheet  of  oaks  and  beeches,  and  still 
earlier  to  the  time  when  a  gieat  belt 
of  J  and  connected  it  with  the  Conti- 
nent from  Holland  to  Portugal.  Even 
the  veriest  Red  Radical  like  niywelf 
may  well  share  John  Mill's  hope  that 
the  8i)read  of  agriculture  and  political 
economy  may  never  succeed  in  im- 
proving these  dear  dumb  friends  and 
pensioners  of  ours  off  the  face  of  the 
earth.  They  are  one  of  the  beautiful 
links  which  bind  us  to  the  j)ne-liuman 
past ;  and  I  hope  we  may  hand  them 
on  as  part  of  our  common  heritage 
to  those  who  will  follow  us  hereafter 
in  a  higher  and  more  human  future. 

Evolutionism,  it  often  seems  to  me, 
throws  a  wonderful  charm  of  this  half 
historical  sort  around  every  beast  or  '. 
bird  or  plant  in  the  meadows  about 
us.     These  fallow  deer  ;ire  no  longer  ' 
mere  accidental  animals  I^appeningto 
live  in  the  park  here  at  the  present  day : 
they  are  creatures  with  a  whole  past  j 
history  of  their  own,  as  interesting  to  | 
the  eye  of  the  evolutionist  as  a  castle  | 
or  an   earthwork   to   the  eye  of  an  I 
archaeologist,  and  as  a  cathe<lral  or  a 
temple  to  the  eye  of  Mr.  Freeman  or 
Mr.    Fergusson.     We  have  all  been  | 
living  all  our  lives  in  the  midst  of  a 
veritable  prehistoric  Ilium,  will  all  its 
successive  deposits  and  precious  relics 
lying  loose  about  us,  and  we  needed  . 
only  a  ♦Schliemann  to  tell  us  what  it 
all   meant.      Mr.   Darwin    and    Mr. 
Herbert  Spencer  have  read  the  riddle 
for  us,  and  in   doing  so  they  have ; 
given  us  a  key  which  will  help  us  to 
unlock,  each  for  himself,  a  thous.uid 
little  secrets  of  nature  that  meet  us 
every  day,  on  our  way  through  the 
world,  at  every  turn.     These  fallow 
deei",  for  example,  have  a  quite  re-i 
cover  able  pedigree,  which  shows  us 
just  by  what  steps  they  have  been  de-  i 
veloped  from  an  early  common  rumi- ; 
nating  ancestor;  and  this  pedigree  M.  \ 
Gaudry   has    worked   out  for  us   in 
detail  as  admirably  as  Professor  Hux-  j 
ley  has  worked  out  the  genealogy  of  j 
the  horse,   and   as    Dr.   Mivart   has  I 
worked  out  that  of  the  cat.  ' 


Tlie  very  earliest  ruminants  whose 
remains  we  meet  with  in  the   lower 
tertiary    strata     were    all    hornless. 
:  The  resembled  in  this  respect  a  few 
abnormal   living  kinds,   such   as  the 
camels,  the  llamas,  and  the  alpacas, 
though,   of   course,    these   kinds    are 
far  more  »[)e<!iali/.ed  in   other   ways 
than   were  their   primitive  ruminant 
ancestors.     But  as  time  went  on,  the 
wager  of   battle   among  the  males, 
common  to  so  many  races  of   mam- 
mals, produced  singular  results  upon 
the  whole  ruminating  tribe.     The  na- 
ture of  their  food  prevented  them  for 
the   most  part  from    fighting   with 
their  teeth,  like  carnivores,   so   they 
took  to  butting  with  their  heads  in- 
stead.     Thus,    either  by   accident:>I 
variations,  as  Mr.  Darwin  thinks,  or 
by   use   and    wont,  as  Mr.    Herbert 
Spencer  rather  believes   (with   more 
probaljility,  as  it  seems  to  my  humble 
judgment),  aided  in  any  case  by  natu- 
ral selection,  almost  all  the  ruminants 
grew  at  last  to  have  horns  or  antlers 
of  one  kind  or  another.     But  these 
weapons  of  rivalry — for  they  are  all 
but  useless   against   other    species — 
differ  greatly  m  their  structm-e,  and 
therefore    in    their    origin,    between 
race   and   race.     All     that     is     con- 
stant    is     the     presence      of     some 
kind     of     offensive    butting     instru- 
ment   upon   the    forehead.     In    the 
bison  and  ox  tribe,  including  the  ante- 
lopes and  goats,  the  weapons  take  the 
form  of  real  horns — that  is  to  say,  of 
hollow  permanent  dermal  processes ;  in 
the  deer  tribe,  they  appear  as  antlers — 
that  is  to  say,  as  deciduous  bony,  not 
horny,  structures  ;  and  in  the  giraffe 
they  exist  in  the  shape  of  permanent 
bosses  of  the  f;kull,  covered  with  hair 
and   skin,   but   used   very  fiercely  in 
combav,  even  in  Regent's  Park,  where 
one  giraffe  once  actually  drove  his 
horn   clean  into  the  skull  of  another. 
Only  one   very   abnormal  ruminant, 
the  musk  deer  (which  is  not  really  a 
deer  at  all,  but  a  speciali/.ed  aberrant  I 
descendant  of  the  old  midift'erentiated 
ancestral  type),  has  weapons  of  a  dif- 
ferent   character — a    pair  of  curved! 
tusks  in  the  upper  jaw,  used  in  the 


VIGNETTES  FROM  NATURE. 


[454]  » 


same  way  as  those  of  the  wild  boar. 

The  historical  development  of  ant- 
lers in  the  deer  tribe  is  very  marked. 
While  the  group  was  still  young  and 
dominant,  with  the  o[)en  grass-clad 
tertiary  plains  all  before  it,  and  with 
plenty  of  elbow  room  to  spread  and 
multiply,  it  had  as  yet  no  Aveapons  of 
offense  of  s  ay  kind.  But  as  the  races 
grew  thicker  and  more  numerous, 
and  as  space  failed  the  younger  gen- 
erations— for  deer,  like  men,  are  sub- 
ject to  the  inexorable  logic  of  the 
Malthusians — the  fathers  of  the  herd 
began  to  light  among  themselves  for 
the  possession  of  the  does,  and  only  the 
strongest  survived  to  become  the  pa- 
rents of  future  deerkind.  Butting 
naturally  produces  hard  bosses  or 
protuberances  of  some  sort ;  and  in 
the  ancestral  deer  these  protuberances 
took  the  shape  of  bony  projections  on 
the  forehead.  Again,  those  deer 
which  had  the  most  marked  and  most 
j)ointed  projections  would  best  van 
(juisb  their  rivals,  and  so  fare  best  in 
the  struggle  for  the,  hinds.  Their 
descendants  would  inherit  their  pecu- 
liarities with  more  or  less  variation  ; 
and  would  similarly  be  selected  by  the 
law  of  battle  in  accordance  with  their 
lighting  powers  and  the  fitness  of  their 
weapons. 

Now  this  probability,  set  forth  a 
priori  by  Mr.  Darwin,  exactly  tallies 
with  the  geological  record,  as  inter- 
preted by  M.  Gaudry  and  Professor 
Boyd  Dawkins.  The  very  vague  and 
unspecialized  deer  of  the  lower  mio- 
cene  period  had  no  antlers  at  all ; 
they  were  somewhat  like  musk-deer 
without  the  tusks,  or  like  young  fawns 
in  their  first  summer.  But  in  the 
mid-niirceni,  antlers  make  their  first 
appeai'ance  as  mere  short  pointed 
knobs ;  next,  they  develop  a  single 
side  tine ;  and  in  the  upper  raiocene 
they  come  out  as  fully  evolved  as  in 
our  modern  species.  Every  interme- 
<iiate  stage  can  be  traced  between  the 
mere  nascent  boss  like  that  of  a  bud- 
ding roe  in  our  own  day,  and  the 
many-branched  headpiece  of  the  exist- 


ing reindeer.  Indeed,  one  late  tertiary 
species  had  a  pair  of  wonderfully  in- 
tricate antlers  which  far  surpassed  in 
complexity  tho.se  of  any  living  elk  ; 
but,  like  many  other  highly  special- 
ized creatures,  this  over-developed 
type  seems  to  have  fallen  a  prey  to 
the  great  extinct  carnivores  of  the 
same  period.  Before  the  advent  of 
man,  many  such  high  ty)»e8  existed, 
and  they  may  perhaps  have  been 
partly  destroyed  by  his  monopolizing 
all  the  most  open  and  desirable  plains 
as  his  special  hunting  grounds.  For 
we  now  know  that  man  is  certaiiily  a 
quaternary,  and  probably  a  tertiary 
genuB  as  well ;  and,  even  in  his  lowest 
and  humblest  form,  his  intelligence 
must  have  made  him  fvom  the  very 
first  a  dominant  race  and  the  real  lord 
of  creation. 

It  is  interesting  to  note,  too,  that 
the  historical  evolution  of  antlers  in 
the  deer  tribe  is  exactly  paralleled  by 
the  modern  evolution  of  antlers  in 
every  individual  red  deer.  In  the 
first  year  a  stag  has  no  horns  at  all, 
and  is  technically  known  as  a  calf. 
In  his  second  year  he  puts  forth  a  pair 
of  rounded  bosses,  and  is  therefore 
called  a  knobber  in  the  slang  of  tho' 
gillies.  With  his  third  year  the  knobs, 
fall  off,  and  are  replaced  by  longer 
horns,  called  dags,  while  the  stag- 
himself  is  now  known  as  a  brocket. 
Thus,  year  after  year,  the  grov/ing 
deer  reproduces  one  stage  after  an- 
other of  the  ancestral  development,  till 
at  length  the  top  of  the  horn  expands 
into  a  broad  crown,  and  the  beast  is 
then  finally  dubbed  a  hart  or  "stag  of 
ten,"  from  the  number  of  tines  on  each' 
of  his  antlers.  It  would  be  quite  possi- 
ble to  pair  the  cast  horns  of  each  year 
tolerably  exactly  with  corresponding 
adult  horns  from  the  successive  ter- 
tiary strata.  Every  deer  in  fact 
recapitulates  in  his  own  person  the' 
wliole  evolution  of  his  race,  the  antler 
of  each  successive  year  being  differ- 
ent, not  only  in  size,  but  in  form  and 
arrangement  as  well,  from  those  of 
all  previous  seasons. 


I  ; 


4  [4n8J 


VIGNETTES  FROM  NATURE. 


II. 
SEDGE   AND  WOODRUSH. 

Sitting  here  on  the  edge  of  the  low 
wall  thiit  banks  upon  the  meadow 
against  Cannington  Lane,  I  can  pick, 
without  stooping,  half  a  dozen  differ- 
ent kind  of  grassy-looking  weeds,  all 
within  easy  reach  of  njy  hand,  in  the 
field  behind  me.  The  sun  is  shining 
brightly  through  the  horse-chestnut 
branches,  the  west  wind  is  blowing 
gently  over  the  valley,  and  the  day  is 
warm  enough  to  tempt  a  little  loiter- 
ing under  the  scanty  shade  of  the 
young  foliage  overhead  ;  so  I  cannot 
do  better  than  pick  and  examine  a 
few  of  these  unnoticed  flowers,  whose 
pale  yellow  spikelets  are  hardly  con- 
spicuous enough  to  attract  the  notice 
of  any  save  a  botanical  eye.  Grass, 
most  people  would  call  them  ;  and  in- 
deed their  leaves  are  grassy-looking 
blades  enough ;  but  a  single  close 
glance  at  their  reedy  stems  and  clus- 
tered flower-heads  would  suggest 
even  to  the  unpracticed  observer  that 
their  stalks  and  blossoms  differed 
widely  from  the  little  scaly  panicles 
of  the  true  grasses. 

To  my  thinking,  there  are  few 
plants  so  pretty  as  all  these  small, 
insignificant  -  looking,  unconsidered 
weeds,  whose  flowers  need  to  be  ex- 
amined somewhat  minutely  before  we 
can  fully  appreciate  the  real  beauty 
of  their  form  and  arrangement.  Any- 
body can  see  and  admire  at  once  a 
foxglove  or  an  orchid,  but  not  every- 
body can  see  and  admire  at  once  the 
delicate  gracefulness  of  spurges  and 
quakegrasses,  of  little  waving  sedges 
and  tufted  woodrushes.  One  feels 
that  the  beauty  of  the  larger  blossoms 
is  something  flaunting  and  meretri- 
cious— an  Aphrodite  Demosia  tricked 
out  in  gaudy  colors  to  please  the 
most  careless  passer-by ;  whereas  the 
tiny  green  and  brown  flowers  of  the 
fields  and  hedgerows  appeal  to  a 
more  esoteric  circle— a  select  few  who 
can  sympathize  with  nature  in  her 
more  sombre  as  well  as  in  her  bright- 
er mood^      L' Allegro  is  the  world's 


side  of  nature,  but  II  Penseroso  is  the 
poet's. 

Look,  for  example,  at  this  tall  stalk 
of  woodrush,  its  stem  clasped  by  two 
or  three  drooping  aiul  pensile   leaf- 
blades,  and  its  top  crowned  by  four 
or    five    thickly-clustered    heads    of 
small  brown  five  rayed  .flowers.     At 
first  sight  you  would  say  it  was  mere- 
ly a  bit  of  grass  with  a  brownish  top 
to  it ;  but  ga/.e  a  little  closer  and  you 
will  see  that  the  heads  consist  each 
of  half  a  dozen  tiny  regular  blossoms 
of  a  very  pretty,  fantastic  sort.  Each 
blossom'  has  six  dry,  brown   petals, 
with  silvery,  thin,  transparent  edges ; 
and  in    the  middle,  as   many   bright 
yellow  stamens  stand  out  delicately 
against  the  brown  background  of  the 
corolla.     Every  one  of  them  is  like  a 
sombre  copy  in  miniature  of  a  lily  or 
an  amaryllis,  not   very  striking  to  a 
careless    observer,    but    marvelously 
pretty  and  perfect  when  you  look  at 
tentively  into  the  tiny  rosettes.    And 
the  history  of  these  dry,  brown  flow- 
ers  is    in    itself    curious    enough  to 
make  them   well  worth  a  moment's 
examination.      For  the  woodrush  is 
almost  undoubtedly  a  faded  and  col- 
orless descendant  of  some  once  col- 
ored and  brilliant  ancestor.  You  may 
be  fairly  sure  of  that  from  the  mere 
look  of  the  dry,  brown  petals.   Every 
blossom  with  petals,  however  small 
or  green  or  inconspicuous,  has  once 
been  a  bright   and  flaunting  flower  ; 
for  the  sole  object  of  petals  is   to  at- 
tract the  eyes  of  insects,  and  they  are 
t'orefore  found  nowhere  but   aniciig 
insect-fertilized  plants  or  their  degen- 
erate   descendants.     Flowers    which 
have   always   been  fertilized  by   the 
wind   never  have    any  petals  at  all, 
brown,  green,  or  otherwise  ;  but  flow- 
ers which  are  fertilized  by  insects  have 
them  red,  white,  blue  or  yellow,  and 
flowers  which  have  once  been  so  fer- 
tilized and  have  afterwards  relapsed 
almost  always  retain  some  memorial 
of  their  old  estate  in  the  shape  of 
dwarfed  and  colorless  petals,  whose 
function  is  gone,  while  the  rudiment- 
ary structure    still    survives.     They 
point  back,  like  the  fasces  of  the  By- 


VI0NETTE8  FKOM  NATURE. 


[4S6|  ^ 


/.antine  emperors,  to  the  past  glorien 
of  their  race  in  earlier  times. 

Our  fields  are  full  of  such  degen- 
erate flowers,  with  green   or  brown 
corollas,  Horaetimes  carefully  tucked 
out  of  the  way  of  the  stamens,  so  as 
hardly    to    be  seen  unless  you  pull 
them  out  on  purpose :  for,  contrary 
to  the  general  belief,  evolution  does 
not  by  any  means  always  or  necessa- 
rily result  in  progress  and  improve- 
ment.    Nay,  the  real  fact  is  that  by 
far  the  greater  number  of  plants  and 
animals  are  degraded  types — products 
of  retrogression   rather  than  «jf   up- 
ward development.     Take   it  on  the 
whole,  evolution  is  always  producing 
higher  and  still  higher  forms  of  life ; 
but  at  the  same  time  stragglers  are 
always    falling  into  the  rear  as  the 
world  marches  onward,  and  learning 
how  to  get  their  livelihood  in  some 
new   and    disreputable  maimer   ren- 
dered   possible    by     natui-e's    latest 
achievements.     The  degraded    types 
live  lower  lives,  often  at  the  expense 
of  the  higher,  but  they  live  on  some- 
how ;  just  as  the  evolution  of  man 
was  followed  by  the  evolution  of  sonie 
fifty    new    parasites,  on   puri)08e  to 
feed  upon  him. 

It  would  be  wrong  to  suppose,  how- 
ever, that  these  dry  brown  petals  in 
the  woodrush  have  now  no  function 
at  all :  they  have  found  out  a  new  one 
to  which  they  have  adapted  them- 
selves, although  the  old  one  of  attract- 
ing insects  has  passed  away.  When- 
ever and  however  the  woodrush  took 
once  more  to  the  primitive  and  waste- 
ful method  of  fertilization  bv  the  wind 
we  cannot  say.  But  it  is  a  low,  lithe, 
grass  like  plant,  growing  with  the 
grasses  in  the  wind-swept  meadows ; 
and  almost  all  the  jilants  of  the  same 
habit  and  habitat  are  wind-fertilized 
as  well.  Living,  as  they  do,  in  great 
numbers  close  together,  with  bending 
stems  and  often  feathery  heads,  they 
do  not  seem  to  waste  so  much  pollen 
as   other,  taller,  and   more   scattered 


flowers  would  waste,  if  obliged  to 
trust  to  the  breezes  alone  for  its  dis- 
persion. At  any  rate,  almost  all  wind- 
fertilized  plants  are  obliged  to  have 


some  plan  for   preventing  the  pollen 
of  each  bhtssoin  from  falling  upon  its 
own   pistil,    and  so  producing   poor, 
weak,  self-fertilized  seeds.     They  al- 
most always  display  some  curious  de- 
vice,   to    nisure    a    (toss    with    the 
neighboring    flowers.     In  the  wood- 
rush    the    thin    papery   petals    have 
been  utilized  in  a  manner  subsidiary 
to.  this   new  object.     They  were   no 
longer  of  any  service  in  attracting  in- 
sects, but  they  have  been  very  simply 
diverted  to  another  function.     Here  J 
have  picked  one  of  the  younger  he^ds 
with    the     blossoms    yet    unopened. 
From  the  top  of  each  flower  a  long 
white    ])lume   of  three   waving  fila- 
ments— a  Prince  of  Wale's  feather  in 
miniature —  protrudes     through     the 
tightly  closed  petals.     These  plumes 
are  the  sensitive  surface  of  the  pistil : 
and  to  them   the   pollen-grains    are 
blown  from   other  surrounding  blos- 
soms, already  fully  opened.     As  soon 
as  the  seeds  have  thus  been  impreg- 
nated, the  little   plumes  wither  away, 
and  then  the  petals,  which  have  hith- 
erto covered  the  stamens,  open  immedi- 
ately, releatiing  the  stamens,  as  you  see 
them  in  the  first  head  I  plucked.   The 
pollen   blown   from  them  falls  upon 
some  other  flower  still  in  the  bud  ;  and 
so  each   head  as  it  opens  fertilizes  in 
turn   its   unopened    neighbors.     You 
can  gather  lots  of  them  here  in  every 
stage  of  blossoming,  from  the  first  re- 
ceptive period  with   hanging  plumes 
and  tigiitly  covered  stamens,    to  the 
last  distributive  period  with  open  i)et- 
als  and  stamens  shedding  freely  their 
golden  pollen-grains. 

This  pretty  nodding  sedge,  on  the 
other  hand,  shows  us  another  way  of 
solving  the  self-same  problem — how 
to  prevent  the  pollen  from  falling 
upon  the  pistil  of  its  own  blossom. 
The  sedge  has  done  it  very  simply,  by 
putting  all  the  stamens  in  one  head  of 
flowers  at  the  top,  and  all  the  pistils 
in  another  head  at  the  bottom.  Look 
!  closely  into  this  plant  again,  and  you 


ill 


will  see  at  once  that  it  has  gone  even 
further  than  the  woodrush  on  the 
downward  path  of  degradation.  It 
has  no  trace  of  petals  at  all ;  indeed,  it 


0  [457] 


VIGNKTTES  FltO.M  NATl  ItE. 


'iH  poHHiblc  that  it  hiiH  never  IwmI  iiiiv  ;  itixl  llir  lironxe-inuilfd  heetleH  urn 
thoui^li,  jii<l}rinj{  from  its  cIohc  rehi-  liiintiiig  lor  Hinuller  insects  l)eHi<le 
tionH  an<l  the  numerous  iMtcrniediute  '  the  miitted  stems  and  roots  of  the;  h'lpr 
forms,  it  is  in«»re  hlcely  that  it  once  white  stitchworts.  The  gorse  has 
had  them,  hut  has  now  hopelessly  h>st  )/urst  into  its  wonted  hhi/e  of  hloHsom, 
them  — as  hoi)eh)Ssly  as  the  sinvke  has  so  hrigiit  that  one  can  hardly  wonder 
lost  its  lejjfs.  However  this  may  l)e,  at  Linnteus,  who  fell  upon  his  knees 
the  llowers  of  the  seilge  ari'  n(»w  ar  ;  and  thanked  (rod  witli  fervor  when 
rttnge<l  in  a  thoroughly  husinfss-like  first  he  looked  up<»n  its  golden  glory, 
manner  for  wind  fertilization.  F)ac)i  I'p  to  this  morning  I  have  counted 
stalk  hears  three  t>r  foMV  little  branch  '  seventy  eight  kinds  of  wild  Howers  in 
ing  spikelets,  the  top  spikelets consist- i  hlossoni,  not  including  catkins  or 
ing  altogether  of  yellow  stamens,  c«»v  I  grasses.  And  now  to-day,  for  the 
ered  in  groups  of  three  by  singh'  rus-  first  time  this  season.  I  see  tlie  pretty 
set-black  scales,  while  the?  lower  spike  |  pink  clusters  of  the  red  campion  adti- 
lets  consist  altogether  of  pistils,  with  j  ing  their  warmer  tint  to  the  blues  and 
two  or  three  white  feathery  plinnes  '  yellows  and  greens  of  the  tangled 
hanging  out  to  catch  the  pollen,  and  bank  beside  me.  Already  the  butter- 
similarly  covered  by  dark  sheathing !  flies  have  found  out  th  t  its  big 
bracts.  The  whole  head  thus  looks  i  swollen  buds  have  openea  and  made 
like  a  group  of  miniaturi!  catkins,  the  ,  clear  the  way  to  the  nectaries;  and  I 
ujiper  catkins  bright  yellow  and  the  can  notice  a  great  bustling  hairy 
under  ones  delicately  frosti-d  with  i  bumbU?  bee  blundering  about  the 
HuflFy  white.  The  use  of  this  arrange- !  mouth  of  one  Hower  on  the  stalk, 
nient  is  obvious.  When  the  wind  I  while  lialf  a  dozen  little  flies  are 
shakes  the  heads  so  that  they  bend  and  ;  gathered  around  the  sticky  calyx  of 
jostle  against  one  another,  the  tallest  another.  Evidently  the  red  campion 
sjtikelet  on  each  stalk  naturally  strikes   is   very  successful   in  its   efforts   to 


against  the  lower  spikeletsof  its  neigh 
bors.  Thus  each  plant  fert'iizes  the 
next  in  or<h'r ;  and  even  if  the  heads 
A&  .not  happen  to  touch,  yet  the  pollen 
blowTB  from  the  one  falls  forward  uj>on 
.the  other,  so  j»roducing  exactly  the 
Trame  result.  Indeed,  cross-fertiliza- 
tion is  brought  about  in  different  plants 
by  a  humlicd  such  devices;  and  to  ob- 
Herve  the  various  mechanisms  by  which 
it  is  furthered,  forms  a  fresh  and  al- 
moBt  endless  pleasure  for  every  vxmn- 
try  M  alk. 


KED 


rii. 

CAMIMON    AN!)    VVllITK. 


attract  the  eyes  of  insects.  I  saw  it 
distinctly  a  hundred  yards  away,  and 
the  butterflies  seem  to  see  it  ']uite  as 
well,  and  a  great  deal  more  effect 
ually. 

The  campions,  indeed,  are  flowers 
in  which  specialization  and  adaptation 
have  in  many  respects  )»f*cri  carried  to 
an  e.\tremely  high  pitch  True,  they 
cannot  compare  in  complexity  with 
the  orchids  or  the  dead-nettles,  nor 
even  with  the  little  daisies  and  dande- 
lions around  them.  Yet  in  their  own 
way  they  have  found  themselves  a 
]  place  in  nature  which  they  are  well 
fitted  not  only  to  fill  but  also  to 
adorn.     There  are  two  common  kinds 


in  England,  known  to  botanists  as 
Thk  bank  along  the  footpath  that  the  day  and  night  lychnis  respect- 
leads  from  the  village  to  Culverhole  ively,  but  to  village  children  as  red 
Cliff's  is  just  at  present  all  aglow  with  and  white  campion.  The  correSjjond- 
a  varied  wealth  of  flowers  and  insect  ■  ence  of  these  two  names  is  full  of 
life.  The  yell»»w  cabbage-butterflies  j  significance.  The  day  lychnic  has  a 
are  flitting  over  the  blue  masses  of !  bright  pink  blossom,  quite  scentless, 
wild  hyacinths ;  the  ladybirds  are  [  and  opening  in  the  morning.  It  is 
busy  among  the  wee  green  aphides  specialized  for  fertilization  by  bees 
on  the  budding  sprays  of  honeysuckle;   and  buttt^rliies  (more  particularly  the 


VIGNKTTKS  FHOM   NATL  UK. 


l4.-isi  7 


liittcr),  which  art' t'(»l(ir-loviiig  in.H'ctt*, 
Hiul  which  hunt  hy  si<;lit  mainly, 
aiwayH  during  the  hourn  of  Hiinlimht. 
The  night  lychnin,  on  thi'  othi'i-  hun<1, 
has  whitf  bloHHoins,  opiMiing  in  thi- 
evening,  anil  faintly  Hcenti'd  with  a 
vugue  but  pleuHatit  perfume.  It  is 
specialized  for  fertilization  hy  moths, 
wliieh  Hy  at  night,  and  which  liave 
sight  not  adapted  to  the  perception  of 
color.  Mr.  li.  T.  Lowne  has  made 
some  interesting  microscopical  studies 
of  insects'  eyes,  and  has  shown  that 
the  eyes  of  moths  correspond  to  those 
of  owls  among  birds,  in  the  absence 
of  certain  nervous  elements  supposed 
to  be  the  organs  of  the  color  sense; 
while  the  eyes  of  V)ees  and  butterflies 
correspond  to  those  of  day  birds  in 
the  presence  of  such  organs.  In  fact, 
it  is  clear  that  a  color  sense  would  be 
of  little  use  to  nocturnal  or  crepus- 
cular animals,  because  the  amount  of 
light  in  the  evening  is  seldom  sutH- 
cieni/  to  show  up  the  distinctive  colors 
of  different  objects. 

Heiicd  almost  all  the  flowers  which 
appeal  specially  to  the  moths  are 
cither  white  or  pale  yellow — good  re- 
flectors in  the  twilight  or  moonlight — 
and  they  are  invariably  scented, 
sometimes  very  strongly.  Many  of 
these  white  and  perfumed  night  blos- 
soms are  great  favorites  in  our  gar- 
dens and  conservatories — for  example, 
jasmine,  stephanctis,  tuberose  and 
night-flowering  cereus.  Some  of  them 
actually  close  up  during  the  day,  and 
most  of  them  emit  their  jierfume  only 
m  the  evening,  when  the  moths  on 
which  they  dejiend  for  fertilization 
are  abroad.  Moths,  indeed,  hunt 
mostly  by  smell,  though  they  are  also 
partly  guided  by  sight,  and  perhaps 
even  in  part  by  the  faint  phosphores 
<!ence,  hardly  visible  to  human  eyes, 
which,  as  the  daughter  of  the  great 
Linnaeus  flrst  observed,  plays  lambent 
over  certain  of  their  favorite  blossoms 
in  the  early  shades  of  night.  I  have 
seen  this  phosphorescence  myself  (or 
fancied  I  saw  it)  on  the  petals  of  the 
evening  primrose ;  but  only  a  few 
people  have  weak  enough  vision  to 
detect  it,  for,  like  negative  images,  it 


cannot  be  seen  by  persons  of  robust 
an<l  vigorous  sitrj...  Women  and  ar- 
tists perceive  it  ofteiier  than  men  of 
science,  which  no  (h)ui)t  tells  rather 
hardly  against  its  objective  reality 
Vet  perhaps  they  and  the  moths  can 
se(!  some  things  which  are  hidden 
from  the  wise  and  learned  ;  at  least. 
I  like  to  believe  so,  and  to  persuade 
myself  that  I,  too,  am  in  this  matter 
on  the  side  of  the  poets. 

The  difl'erences  between  the  two 
campions,  to  return  once  more  to  solid 
science,  form  a  very  instructive  study 
in  the  origin  and  growth  of  specific 
distinctions.  In  most  points  the  two 
jdants  are  absolutely  alike,  and  even 
the  technical  botanists,  who  never 
miss  a  chance  of  manufacturing  a  new 
species  where  possible,  admit  that  they 
are  ])erh.'ips  mere  varieties  of  a  single 
form.  But  then  these  varleties,especial- 
ly  when  so  markedly  dependent  upon 
difference  in  function,  are  nothing  less 
than  new  sj»ecies  in  the  making.  They 
are  nascent  stages  of  fresh  types.  An 
accidental  variety  of  leaf  or  flower, 
like  the  monstrosities  which  we  culti- 
vate in  our  gardens,  means,  as  a  rule, 
very  little  indeed,  because  it  is  not 
correlated  with  any  need  or  habit  of 
the  ])lant.  It  affords  no  material  upon 
which  natural  selection  can  work.  liut 
a  variety  like  the  white  cami)ion  has 
of  course  a  distinct  meaning,  and  is  it- 
self already  the  product  of  much  se- 
lective action.  That  the  white  form, 
not  the  red  one,  is  the  divergent  vari- 
ety, we  may  infer  from  several  pecu- 
liarities, notably  from  the  fact  that 
most  of  the  ly(!hni8  tribe  have  pink 
flowers,  and  that  no  other  British 
species  has  white  ones. 

Suppose,  however,  that  some  of 
these  pink  cami)ions  take  (at  first  by 
some  accident)  to  opening  at  night, 
then  they  may  perhaps  chance  to  at- 
tract the  eyes  of  some  passing  moth, 
and  so  to  get  fertilized  by  the  insect 
in  its  search  for  honey  carrying  the 
pollen  from  head  to  head.  Thus  a 
second  generation  of  night-flowering 
campions  would  be  set  up,  still  with 
bright  pink  blossoms.  But  the  color 
of  petals  is  always  more  or  less  vari- 


iii 


H   (450) 


VIGNETTES  FItOM  NATURE 


jihlo,  hfiinR  only  kept  Htraight  bv  fmic- 
tioiiftl  iiwtls;  ftiid  HO  Hoiiic  of  thi'Mc 
<'v«niiig  varietij's  woiiM  bo  pretty  nun' 
to  hav(!  more  fjidefl  iuhI  wnitiHh  flow 
eiH  tliaii  otluMs,  iiiul  thcHO  wouM  best 
attiiua  the  ovoH  of  the  fcriili/iiij; 
iiiotliH,  and  ofttMU'st  accordingly  sue 
ct't'd  in  KC'ttiiig  their  h('1'<1.  After  long 
gcnerationH  of  Hii<;h  unconscioiirt  hcIoc- 
tion,  the  white -petulled  individuals 
would  establish  themselves  as  a  per- 
manent race;  though  even  to  this  day 
tho  original  pinkinesH  of  tlieir  consti- 
tution has  not  wholly  died  out.  It 
reasserts  itself  from  tune  to  time ;  for 
you  may  often  find  scented  evening 
campiouH  with  very  pale  |>ink  petals, 
recalling  the  old  type  of  the  race,  just 
as  amongst  ourselves  apaiticularbone, 
or  tooth,  or  eyebrow  Bometinies  still 
recalls  the  ancient  anthropoid  peculi- 
arities. I  Jy  somewhat  the  same  pro- 
cess the  extra  attraction  of  scent  must 
have  been  ac(piired.  Even  the  date 
flowering  has  accommodated  itself  to 
the  new  conditions,  for  the  red  cara- 
.  jtions  are  now  all  coming  into  blossom 
and  will  soon  be  out  in  every  hedge- 
row, wliile  the  white  ones  do  not 
oi)en  for  at  least  another  fortnight. 
'J  here  are  plenty  of  butteiHies  now  in 
the  warm  sunsliine  at  noon;  but  the 
nights  are  still  far  too  chilly  for  moths 
to  venture  out  as  yet  from  their  com- 
fortable cocoons.  A  white  lychnis 
flowering  this  week  would  therefore 
And  its  life  thrown  away,  with  no 
friendly  insect  at  hand  to  help  it  in 
setting  its  jtrecious  seeds!  Thus  all 
those  which  IjJossomed  too  early  have 
been  slowly  weeded  out,  and  only  the 
late-flowering  individuals  have  at  last 
been  left  to  peri)etuate  their  kind. 


IV. 

BUTTERFLY-HUNTING  BE- 
GINS. 

The  Lammas  Fields  are  now  posi- 
tively thick  with  various  butterflies,  so 
I  have  come  out  this  brilliant  afternoon 
to  watch  and  make  notes,  as  my  wont 
is,  on  their  habits  and  manners.  The 
first  of  Ma}""  is  to  the  naturalist  what 
the  twelfth  of  August  or  the  first  of 


September  is  to  the  sportsman — it  iR 
the  real  opening  of  his  year,  the  date 
wlien  flower-hunting  and  butterfly- 
hunting  both  begin.  On  tlio  2d^  in 
spite  of  backwani  weather,  the  cab- 
bage butterflies  were  already  airing 
their  riiilphur-yellow  pinions  in  lh<' 
sun,  above  the  tall  lilac  sprays  of  the 
lady-smocks.  Two  days  later  the 
dragon-flies  were  darting  after  midges 
above  the  boggy  hollows,  and  the 
banded  hedge-snails  were  congregat- 
ing in  numbers  among  the  young 
pale-green  foliage  of  the  hawthorn 
bushes.  On  the  7th,  we  had  a  cloud- 
'  less  blue  hori/on  and  warm  sunshine, 
and  I  saw  an  orange-tip  plimming  its 
junexpanded  wings  and  displaying  itH 
I  beautiful  markings  on  a  blade  of 
i  grass  beside  the  brooklet.  This  even- 
iing,  under  a  nuuikerel  sky,  like  July 
I  weather,  I  have  just  been  watcliing  a 
motionles~  bunch  of  dry  brown  leaves 
on  the  hedge  bank.  Suddenly  one 
of  the  leaves  gets  up,  fltitters  about  in 
the  air  a  bit,  and  then  settles  down 
again  on  anotlier  brown  cluster  a  few 
yards  off.  I  creep  slowly  up  towards 
it,  and  examine  the  locomotive  leaf  as 
it  stands.  It  is  a  little  brown  butter- 
fly, with  folded  wings,  fresh  from  the 
chrysalis;  and  the  lower  or  outer 
surface,  which  alone  is  visible  as  it 
sits,  seems  dappled  over  with  woe 
light  spots,  much  liiic  tlie  spots  of  de- 
cay upon  the  leaves  among  which  it 
hides.  I  clap  my  liaiids  briskly,  and 
it  gets  up  hastily,  opens  its  wings  to 
the  sunshine,  and  sliows  itself  oft"  at 
once  as  a  red-streaked  beauty  in  all 
its  glory.  It  is  not  dilHcult  to  see 
that  the  difference  of  color  in  the 
two  sides  of  its  wings  must  be  de- 
signed for  some  special  purpose,  and 
that  the  purpose  of  the  under  side  U 
to  escape  detection,  while  the  purpose 
of  the  upper  side  is  to  attract  atten- 
tion. 

The  protective  use  of  the  brown 
under  wing  is  very  simply  explained. 
The  insect  must  be  much  exposed  to 
birds  and  other  hostile  creatures  as  it 
sits  still,  and  bo  it  requires  to  resemble 
the  grouud,  leaves,  or  twigs,  on  which 
it  usually  settles,  in  order  to  deceive 


VrONETTES  FUOM  NATURE 


(•Iflo)  ft 


the  eycH  of  its  enemicm.  To  8omc 
pcoulc  it  Hot'iiiH  that  ko  Hli^ht  a  pro- 
tection UH  thiH  could  Hcarcely  bu  of 
any  uhc*  to  the  butterfly.  Natunil 
selection,  they  nay,  can  hardly  work 
upon  Kuch  petty  diflFerenccH.  But  to 
talk  HO  iH  really  to  hIiow  a  minappre- 
liciision  of  what  natural  Hclection 
rij^htly  meanw.  Kvery  butterfly  which 
irtHpotted  by  a  bird,  and  ho  devoured, 
it)  wiped  out  of  existence  for  over, 
with  all  itsnoHsiblo  progeny.  Blvery 
butterfly  which  encapcB,  by  liowever 
Hiight  a  peculiarity,  is  enabled  to  lay 
it8  eggs  in  peace,  and  to  hand  on  its 
pecuharities  to  its  posterity.  This 
Bort  of  selection  is  going  on  every 
day  around  us,  and  no  difference  is 
too  slight  for  it  to  select,  no  resem- 
blance is  too  clumsy  jn'ovided  it  once 
for  a  monient  aids  the  insect  in 
avoi<liiii^  destruction. 

Now,  we  all  know  that  the  eyes  of 
birds  are  very  shar|>  and  keen  indeed. 
A  hawk  soaring  ho  hijjh  in  the  sky 
that  human  sight  fails  to  perceive  it, 
will  yetdiscriniinute  and  pounce  down 
upon  a  lark  in  the  fields  below — a  small 
brown  bird  seated  upon  a  brown  clod 
of  earth  exactly  like  itself  in  coloi*. 
In  just  the  same  way  the  insectivo- 
rojis  birds  keep  a  sharp  look-out  for 
moths  and  butterflies,  upon  which 
they  swoop  at  once  whenever  they 
distinguisli  them  upon  the  ground  be- 
neath. Every  <iay  those  insects 
whose  color  betrays  them  get  thinned 
out  by  their  watchful  enemies,  while 
those  whose  color  protects  them  laan- 
age  to  lay  their  eggs  in  peace,  and 
hand  on  their  own  peculiar  spots  and 
lines  to  their  descendants.  The  con- 
sequence in  the  long  run  is  that  the 
butteiHies  get  better  protected  from 
generation  to  generation,  as  the 
chances  of  interbreeding  with  badly 
protected  individuals  are  e'.iminated 
by  the  action  of  the  birds,  while  only 
the  most  imitatively  colored  individ- 
uals are  left  to  mate  with  one  an- 
other and  to  become  the  parei  ts  of 
future  swarms.  Thus  the  hostile 
birds  are  themselves  the  instruments 
through  which  the  insects  have  been 
armed  defensively  against  their  dep- 


redations. For  th(^  various  individuals 
tend  always  to  vary  a  little  in  mark- 
ing— no  two  plants  or  animals  of  the 
same  species  are  ever  exactly  alike — 
l»ut  the  picking  olf  of  the  brightly 
co'  )red  individuals  by  .tin;  birds  helps 
to  perserve  the  protected  specified 
type  intact.  And  of  courne  the  same 
causes  which  now  preserve  it  origin- 
ally produced  it.  Kver  since  birds 
and  butterflies  have  existed,  the 
process  nuist  constantly  have  been  at 
work;  and  the  birds  and  butterflies, 
in  the  forms  that  we  know,  are  the 
flnal  outcome  of  its  ])erpetual  inter- 
action. 

This  sufficiently  accounts  for  the 
imitative  coloring  of  the  under  sur- 
face, but  it  does  not  sufliciently  ac 
count  for  the  brilliant  and  attractive 
hues  of  the  upper  side.  Those  hues 
were  probably  produced  in  a  very 
different  manner.  At  this  exact  mo- 
ment I  see  two  red  admirals  above  the 
hedge  yonder,  engaged  in  their  pret- 
ty rythmical  courtship,  flying  round 
and  round  one  another,  now  on  top 
and  now  beneath,  chasing  each  other 
in  graceful  curves,  and  seeming  to  be 
engagCvl  for  ten  minutes  at  a  time  in 
a  sort  of  aerial  qu'idrille.  These  two 
butterflies  are  helphig  in  their  small 
degree  to  keep  up  and  intensify  the 
beautiful  colors  of  their  race.  They 
aro  cocpietting  and  flirting  together, 
each  eager  to  display  all  its  char*  s  to 
the  best  advantage,  and  to  attract,  'he 
other  by  its  own  beauty.  If  a  third 
and  prettier  butterfly  happens  to  sail 
up,  the  belle  will  bestow  her  affec- 
tions upon  the  new-comer,  and  the 
vancjuished  beau  will  slink  away  dis- 
graced, leaving  her  to  her  chosen 
mate.  This  second  sort  of  selection 
is  going  on  forever,  side  by  side  with 
the  first ;  the  prettiest,  freshest  and 
most  daintily-marked  insects  being 
always  prefern-d  in  the  pairing  over 
du  r,  dingier,  or  more  battered 
riv.-  s. 

I,  is  interestii.  jf  also  to  note  how 
the  t\      kinds  ol  -<'U'ctionrun  parallel 
with  o      another.     While  the  butter- 
flies are  poised  moti  -nless  upon  twigs 
I-  flower     they  art   in  the  greatest. 


m 


10  [401] 


VIGNETTES  FROM  NATURE. 


<3angcr  from  birds ;  but  in  snch  posi- 
tions ihey  close  their  wings  ami  dis- 
play  only  the  outer  surface,  which  is 
imitatively  and  protectively  colored. 
The  constant  picking  off  of  all  those 
which  can   be  distinguished  when  at 
rest  sulHces    to  keep  the  protective 
colors    always   true.     On    the  other 
hand,   when  the  insects  are  on  the 
wing,  hovering  about  flowers  or  rising 
in   the  air  to  piroutte  and  gambol  in 
the   air  with  their  mates,  they  run 
comparatively    little    risk    from   the 
birds.     They  are  too  nimble  for  their 
pursuers,  and  they  seem  fairly  secure 
by  their  power  of  doubling  as  they 
flit  rapidly  along  from  spray  to  spray. 
The  birds  are   bad  marksmen  at  a 
moving  target ;   they  cannot  double 
like  their  prey,   and   they  prefer  to 
aim   at  their    buttei-flies    sitting,   as 
French   sportsmen  are  said  to  do  at 
partridges.     On  the  other  hand,  with 
butterflies  as   with  men,  faint  heart 
never  won  fair  lady.     If  the  insects 
did  not  venture  out  into  the  open  to 
seek  their  mates  and  to  charm  them 
with    their   painted    pinions,    some 
bolder  rivals  would  carry    off    the 
prize,  and  so  leave  the  cowards  unrep- 
resented i:i  future  ages.     Thus,  in  the 
eourse  of  generations,  a  great  many 
butterflies  have  come  to  have  two 
sets  of  colors — the  one  set  attractive 
for  their  own  kind,  and  the  other  set 
protective  against  their  enemies    The 
lower  sides  of  the  wings  are  colored 
like  the  leaves  or  twigs  on  which  they 
set  with  folded  vans;  the  upper  sides 
are  beautifully  dappled  with  crimson, 
orange,  or  metallic  sheen,  and  flaunted 
boldly  in  the  open  sunlight  as  they 
flit  about  to  woo  their  dainty  mates. 
On    the  other  hand,    moths,   whose 
habits  of  folding  the  wings  are  ex- 
actly reversed,  also  reverse  the  system 
of  coloration.    Many  of  them  which 
fly   by   day  are  quite  as  exquisitely 
decked   as  any  butterflies,  especially 
in  the  tropics;  but  as  a  rule   they 
have  the  upper  surface  of  the  pinions 
imitative  or  protective,  vi  iiile  the  un- 
der surface  is  bright  and  attractive. 
The  one  alone  is  seen  from  above,  as 
the  insect  sits  with  outspread  but  de- 


pressed wings,  close  against  the 
ground  or  the  foliage ;  the  other  is 
turned  to  the  insect's  mate^,  flashing 
in  the  sunshine  with  iridescent  hues, 
as  they  chase  one  another  fantastically 
in  their  airy  love-making.  Some- 
times, however,  a  single  set  of  colors 
answers  both  purposes  alike,  as  I 
have  often  noticed  with  the  Jamaican 
cactus  butterfly— a  bright  yellow  in- 
sect, which  sits  quite  indistinguishable 
among  the  yellow  flowei-s  of  the 
common  wild  cactus,  Avhile  it  becomes 
a  very  conspicuous  creature  indeed 
when  it  raises  itself  into  the  air  on 
its  large  and  brilliant  golden  wings. 
Something  of  the  same  sort,  on  a 
smaller  scale,  may  be  observed  with 
our  own  yellow  cabbage  butterflies 
on  the  golden  bunches  of  flowering 
charlock  in  an  English  cornfield. 


V. 

RED  CAMPION  AGAIN. 

Mcce  itericm  Grispinus!  Another 
red  campion  in  the  hedgerow,  hang- 
ing out  so  temptingly  that  I  sannot 
refrain  from  picking  it,  and,  having 
picked  it,  from  sitting  here  on  the 
stile  between  the  meadows  to  pull  it 
to  pieces.  How  ineffably  vast  and 
how  hopelessly  infinite  is  the  study  of 
nature !  If  a  mere  dilettante  observer 
like  myself — a  saunterer  v/ho  gathers 
posies  and  chronicles  butterflies  by 
the  w^ayside  for  pure  love  of  them — 
were  to  tell  even  all  that  he  has  no- 
ticed in  passing  of  the  manners  arid 
habits  of  a  single  English  weed — of 
its  friends  and  its  enemies,  its  bidden 
guests  and  its  dreaded  foes,  its  attrac- 
tions and  its  defenses,  its  little  life- 
history  and  the  wider  life-history  of 
its  race — Y  e  would  fill  a  whole  book 
up  with  what  he  knows  about  that 
one  little  neglected  flower  ;  and  yet 
he  would  have  found  out  after  all 
but  a  small  fraction  of  all  that  eotild 
be  known  about  it,  if  all  were_ever 
knowable.  Happy  days  when  an 
Admirable  Cricnton  or  a  Pico  della 
Mirandolo  could  offer  to  dispute  de 
omni  scibili  with  every  comer.  In 
our  own  degenerate  times  one  would 


VK4JNETTES  FROM  NATURE. 


(4(i2)  11 


hardly  like  to  engage  duly  to  describe 
the  omnc  scihlle  of  a  solitary  little 
red  campion.  Yet  the  very  sense  of 
tliis  vastness  makes  it  ridiculous  pre- 
sumption for  any  man  to  dispose  of 
the  red  campion  altogether  at  a  single 
sitting.  I  must  stop  to  look  again  at 
my  pretty  flower,  and  to  decide  upon 
the  meaning  of  at  least  tho  most 
salient  points  in  its  structure  and  ar- 
rangement. 

The  campions  are  pinky  by  family, 
and  of  course  share  all  the  main  pe- 
<3uliarities  of  the  pinks  generally. 
But  the  habit  of  the  family  as  regarcls 
its  method  of  fertilization  differs 
greatly  from  plant  to  plant,  and  has 
impressed  itself  markedly  upon  their 
forms.  There  is  one  great  group  of 
piiiks  which  lays  itself  open  to  all  the 
rimall  flies  and  beetles  of  the  world, 
who  come  and  eat  its  pollen  freely  to 
their  hearts'  content.  Of  these,  the 
<!ommon  chickweed  and  the  white 
stitchwort  are  familiar  exampks. 
Most  of  them  are  petty,  mean  look- 
ing, inconspicuous,  weedy  plants,  be- 
cause they  lay  themselves  out  for 
mixed  small  deer  of  uncertain  and 
undecided  tastes,  and  do  not  attempt 
specially  to  attract  the  color-loving 
bees  and  buttei-flies,  the  aesthetic 
aristocrats  of  the  insect  world.  Hence 
their  petals  are  small,  ragged,  and 
mostly  white,  and  their  calyx  consists 
of  five  separate  spreading  pieces. 
They  keep  open  house,  as  it  were,  for 
all  comers  withoutinquiry,  displaying 
their  pollen  unprotected  to  whoever 
wants  it,  on  the  chance  of  a  stray 
grain  or  two  being  carried  by  the  in- 
sects from  head  to  head.  But  the 
campions  belong  to  a  higher  and  more 
specialized  department  of  the  pink 
tribe.  They  and  their  ancestors  have 
■devoted  themselves  to  bees,  butter- 
Hies,  and  other  developed  flower- 
hunters,  whose  long  proboscis  is  pe- 
K'uliarly  intended  to  aid  them  in 
extracting  the  honey  from  deej)  tubu- 
lar blossoms.  Thus  they  have  slowly 
acquired,  by  long  selection,  a  structure 
exactly  adapted  to  a  surer  and  less 
wasteful  moue  cf  fertilization  by 
means  of  these  higher  iuseet  allies. 


The  outer  covering  of  this  campion 
here  does  not  consist  of  separate 
green  sepuls,  like  those  of  the  stitch- 
wort, which  I  have  picked  for  com- 
parison with  it ;  its  five  pieces  lire 
welded  together  into  a  swollen  bell- 
shaped  tube — a  campanular  calyx,  as 
the  syslematists  call  it.  Within  the 
tube,  live  large  pink  petals  rise  on 
long  claws,  kept  together  in  shape  by 
the  pressure  of  the  calyx.  lnsi<le  the 
inner  passage  formed  by  the  petals 
lie  the  pollen-bearing  stamens  or  the 
ovary  with  its  embryo  seeds,  e;ich  in 
a  separate  flower,  whereof  "more 
anon."  Thus  the  pollen  and  the 
honey  are  concealed  out  of  sight  of 
the  useless  small  insects,  and  they  can 
only  be  reached  by  the  long  probos- 
cis of  the  bee  or  the  butterfly.  To  pre- 
vent ants,  small  beetles,  and  other 
honey-eating  intruders  from  creeping 
up  the  stalk,  and  so  rifling  the  nec- 
taries without  doing  any  good  to  the 
plant  in  return,  the  stem  of  the  cam- 
pion is  covered  with  hairs,  and  it 
exudes  a  sticky,  viscid  gum,  both  of 
which  peculiarities  aid  it  mi  baffling 
the  unwelcome  wingless  visitors; 
while  the  inflated  calyx  and  long  tube 
effectually  keep  out  all  flying  insects, 
except  tlie  few  for  whose  visits  the 
plants  specially  lays  itself  out.  Nay, 
as  if  so  many  precautions  were  not 
enough,  the  mouth  of  the  tube,  above 
the  stamens,  is  furthermore  ob- 
structed by  five  little  valves  or  scales, 
one  being  attached  to  the  claw  of 
each  petal;  and  these  scales  can 
easily  be  craned  over,  like  tiny  walls, 
by  the  large  and  long  proboscis  of 
the  bees  or  moths,  but  not  by  the 
little  thieving  flies  against  whose  in- 
cursions the  flowers  are  so  anxious  to 
guard  themselves.  Given  the  red 
campion,  it  is  easy  enough  to  evolve 
the  white  from  it;  but  who  can  say 
how  many  geological  ages  have  gone 
to  the  evolution  of  that  parent  form 
itself  from  a  single  open  blossom  like 
the  white  stitchwort  ? 

All  these  prticautions  for  due  cross- 
fertilization  are  now  actually  in  course 
of  being  followed  up  by  another  ])re- 
caution  yet  more  cilicacious  than  any. 


1 


f 


13  [40:J] 


VIGNETTES  FROM  NATL'ilE. 


The  head  of  blossom  which  I  l)old  in 
my  hiuul,  and  which  I  liave  pulled  off 
in   passing,   consists  wholly  of  male 
flowers ;  every  blossom  contains  stam- 
ens only,  without  any  pistils.     On  the 
other  hand,  here  in  the  hedge  beside 
me  stands  another  ])lant  of  the  same 
kind  whose  blossoms  are  all  female  ; 
every  one  of  them  contains  a  young 
capsule  only,  with  the  embryo  seeds 
distinctly  visible  when  I  cut  it  open, 
but  without  a  trace  of  stamens.    This 
separation  of  the  fructifying  elements 
on   different  plants  is  a  very  recent 
innovation   in  the  campion.s,  and  it 
marks  a  very  high  degree  of  differen- 
tiation— one  not  attained  by  the  vast 
majority  of  the  most  developed  plant 
types.  The  open  pinks,  such  as  chick 
weed,  have  stamens  and  pistils  in  each 
flower,  and  trust  to  chance  for  avoid- 
ing  the    evils    of    self-fertilization, 
Even  the  other  campions  have  the 
same  common  arrangement ;  but  the 
red  and  white  campions  are  peculiar 
in  the  fact  that  they  have  suppressed 
the  stamens  of  some  flowers  and  the 
pistils  of  others,  thus  making  separate 
mdividuals  wholly  male    or  wholly 
female.     Such    an    arrangement    of 
course  makes  croas-fertili/ation  abso 
lately  certain,  and  gives  the  species  a 
gi'eat  advantage  in  the  struggle  for 
life  over  its  less  differentiated  neigh- 
bors.    But  the  recent    date  of  the 
improvement  is  shown  by  its  incom- 
pleteness ;  for  you  may  still  And  some 
stray  campions  with  perfect  stamens 
and  fertile  capsules  In  the  same  blos- 
som. 

Here,  as  in  so  many  other  cases,  we 
catch  modification  in  the  very  act. 
For  it  is  a  fatal  habit  to  picture  evo- 
lution to  oneself  as  a  closed  chapter ; 
we  should  think  of  it  rather  as  a 
chapter  that  goes  on  writing  itself 
continuously  for  ever, 
camj)ion  is  even  now  in 
completing  its  development  from  the 
red ;  and  red  and  white  together  are 
both  even  now  in  course  of  transform- 
ing themselves  from  the  hermaphro- 
dite to  the  separate  condition.  The 
naturalist  can  generally  make  a 
Bhrewd  guess  at  the  age  of  various 


The   white 
course  of 


elements  in  every  plant  or  animal, 
!  He  can  say,  "  This  is  a  peculiarity 
which  must  date  back  before  the 
ajicestors  of  A  diverged  frotn  the  ait- 
cestors  of  B,  because  both  of  them 
share  in  it ;  this,  again,  is  a  peculi- 
arity which  dates  later  than  the  diveig. 
ence,  because  A  possesses  it,  while  B 
does  not :  and  this,  once  more,  is  a 
peculiarity  which  has  hardly  yet 
established  itself,  because  it  is  some- 
times found .  in  A  to-day,  but  some- 
times it  is  absent."  It  such  aman-  jr 
as  this  it  would  not  be  difficult 
roughly  to  reconstruct  the  whole  his- 
tory of  the  red  campion,  if  a  busy 
world  had  leisure  to  hear  it.  But 
what  centum  liuf/me,  what  ferrea  vox, 
would  ever  suffice  to  reconstruct  the 
Avhole  history  of  all  the  plants  and 
animals  I  can  see  around  me  1  It  is^ 
easy  enough  to  catch  their  ej)i8odcs 
vaguely  as  one  examines  them  ;  but 
to  write  them  all  down  in  detiuitw 
language  is  a  task  of  which  even 
science  itself  may  well  despair. 


VI. 

THE    HEDGEHOG'S   HOLE. 

The  broken  ground  in  the  warren 
near  Tom  Fowler's  cottage  is  full  of 
burrows  of  every  description,  from 
the  big  badger's  nest  by  Chimney 
llock  to  the  rabbits'  holes  aud  tiny 
shrew-runs  that  honeycomb  the  soft 
mould  beside  the  landslij>.  Among 
them  are  some  which  i  know  from 
the  pattering  tracks  jit  the  mouth  or 
entrance  to  be  the  haunts  of  spiny 
hedgehogs — the  long  interval  between 
the  prints  of  fore  and  hind  feet,  and 
the  deep  toe-nail  marks  in  the  damp 
clay  are  quite  unmistakable  ;  and  as 
we  want  a  tame  hedgehog  to  keep 
down  the  cockroaches  in  our  lower 
premises,  I  have  turned  out  to-day, 
armed  with  pick  and  shovel,  to  un- 
earth and  carry  off  one  of  these 
uncanny  bruter,  for  my  kitchen  folk. 
After  a  little  digging  in  the  bank, 
using  my  pick  carefully  for  tear  of 
injuring  the  poor  timid  beast,  I  have 
got  to  the  round  warm  nest,  a  mere 
hollow  in  the  ground  roughly  floored 


VIGNETTES  FROM  NATURE. 


[464]  13 


with  leaves  and  dry  moss,  and  lined 
on  the  top  with  a  soft  vault  of  the 
same  materials.  And  now  the  crea- 
ture lies  motionless  in  my  shovel, 
rolled  tightly  up  into  a  prickly  ball, 
and  absolutely  unassailable  in  its 
sjtherical  suit  of  sharply  pointed 
Bpike-armor.  No  defensive  mail  could 
be  more  effectual  or  more  deterrent. 
I  cannot  even  lift  him  up  to  put  him 
into  my  basket;  I  am  obliged  literally 
to  shovel  him  in,  and  then  tie  down 
the  flap  to  keep  him  safely.  There  I 
can  SCO  him  now  through  the  wattles, 
slowly  unrolling  himself,  and  peering 
about  with  hi&  blinking,  beady  black 
eyes,  as  if  to  inquire  what  Arabian 
Nights'  enchantment  has  so  strangely 
transferred  him  against  his  will  to  this 
curious  locomotive  prison. 

Hedge'nogs  are  really  very  common 
animals  in  England,  and  yet  few  peo- 
ple have  any  idea  of  their  existence 
among  half  the  hedges  and  banks  in 
the  meadows  and  copses  around  them. 
The  little  animals  lie  hidden  in  their 
subterranean  holes  or  open  nests  dur- 
ing the  daytime,  and  only  come  out 
in  search  of  slugs,  grubs  and  beetles 
at  nightfall.  Yet  they  are  a  precious 
heritage  of  our  age  for  all  that  j  for 
they  and  the  few  other  remaining 
members  of  the  old  insectivorous 
group  form  the  last  survivors  of  a 
very  early  and  undeveloped  mamma- 
lian type,  the  common  ancestors  of 
all  our  other  European  quadrupeds, 
who  have  diverged  from  them  in 
various  specialized  directions.  They 
rank  as  interesting  middle  links  in 
that  great  broken  but  still  traceable 
chain  which  connects  the  higher 
mammals  with  their  lost  and  unknown 
serai-reptilian  ancestors.  Indeed,  if 
we  had  never  heard  of  the  hedge- 
Iiogs  and  their  allies  before,  and  if 
one  were  now  to  be  brought  for  the 
first  time  by  some  intrepid  explorer 
from  Central  Africa  or  the  Australian 
bush,  all  our  biologists  would  be  as 
delighted  with  it  as  they  were  when 
the  ornithorhynchus  and  the  echidna 
were  discovered  and  recognized  as 
links  between  the  reptile  and  the 
marsupial,  or  when  the  supposed  ex- 


tinct fossil  genus  ceratodus  was  found 
alive  in  the  rivers  of  Queensland, 
thus  connecting  the  ganoid  fishes  with 
the  transitional  lepidosiren,  and 
through  it  with  the  amphibious  newts, 
frogs  and  salamanders.  The  uncon- 
scious black  follow  used  to  devour  as 
barramunda,  and  the  colonist  used 
quietly  to  pickle  as  salmon,  a  marvel- 
ous double-lived  creature,  provided 
with  perfect  gills  and  perfect  lungs, 
for  one  specimen  of  which  a  natural- 
ist would  have  given  his  right  eye ; 
and  so,  too,  our  own  gipsies  have 
been  in  the  liabit  for  ages  of  baking 
in  a  ball  of  earth  the  finest  surviving 
representative  of  the  most  ancient 
placental  mammalian  line.  They  roll 
him  up  (dead,  I  am  glad  to  say)  in  a 
mass  of  kneaded  clay,  w  hich  they  put 
into  the  fire  whole  until  it  begins  to 
crack ;  and  then  they  turn  out  the 
steaming  flesh  by  breaking  the  ball, 
while  the  skin  and  the  spines  stick  in  a 
body  to  the  hardened  lump  of  earth. 
Yet  the  creature  which  they  so  uncer- 
emoniously devour  is  actually  the 
eldest  scion  of  the  great  mammalian 
stock,  whereof  all  the  reigning  houses 
in  Europe  are,  after  all,  but  younger 
branches. 

The  insectivores,  indeed,  as  Profes- 
sor Huxley  has  often  pointed  out,  oc- 
cupy tlie  central  position  among  all 
placental  mammals — that  is  to  say, 
among  all  mammals  higher  than  the 
pouched  class  of  opossums  and  kan- 
garoos. Their  brain  is  very  small  and 
undeveloped,  and  their  organs  gener- 
ally are  but  little  specialized.  All 
the  other  common  quadrupeds — the 
carnivores,  the  rodents,  the  ungulates 
— have  certain  resemblances  towards 
them  which  they  have  not  towards 
one  another.  This  shows  that  the 
hedgehogs,  moles  and  shrews,  our 
representative  English  insectivores, 
display,  as  it  were,  an  arrest  of  de- 
velopment— exhibit  to  us  an  early 
stage  of  mammalian  life  which  the 
other  European  animals  have  long 
passed  by.  Time  was  when  the  an- 
cestors of  dogs  and  deer  and  sheep 
and  rabbits  had  risen  no  higher  in  the 
scale  of  life  than  these  small-brained 


in 


m 


m 


14  |4fl5J 


VIGNETTES  FROM  NATL  RE. 


and  Ktiipid  little  creatures.  But  while 
the  other  r.-ices  have,  for  ages,  out- 
stripi)etl  their  hedgehog-like  ances- 
tors, the  liedgehogs  themselves  have 
remained  always  at  the  same  low 
level  of  develoi»inent  and  intelligence. 
Such  arrests  are  not  uncommon.  In 
the  dim  past  of  geological  ages,  we 
know  that  there  must  have  been  at 
some  time  a  primitive  forefather  of 
the  whole  mammalian  stock  who  had 
some  alhnities  to  the  true  reptiles  and 
still  more  to  the  frogs.  Of  this  hypo- 
thetical ])rogenitor  of  hedgehogs  and 
men  we  have  now  no  trace ;  but  of 
many  subsequent  stages  we  have 
traces  in  abundance.  The  ornitho- 
rhynchus  and  echidna,  which  are  mam- 
mals only  by  courtesy,  still  preserve 
for  us  the  intermediate  step  between 
this  frog  like  creature  and  the  true 
quadrupeds.  The  kangaroos,  wom- 
bats and  i)halangers  show  us  a  still 
higher  link.  The  insectivores  carry 
us  a  step  further;  and  from  them  on 
to  tlie  highest  embodiment  of  all  the 
great  types — the  cats,  the  elephants, 
the  buffaloes,  the  horse  and  man — the 
stages  are  all  easy  and  gradual 

AVhy,  then,  do  such  intermediate 
links  survive?  Why  have  they  not 
all  developed  alike?  When  some 
primitive  insectivores  grew  into  nas- 
cent carnivores  and  nascent  ungulates, 
why  did  some  still  remain  at  the  old 
low  insectivorous  stage  of  hedgehogs 
and  moles?  The  answer  is,  because 
their  organization  was  quite  high 
enough  to  fit  them  for  the  work  they 
had  to  do  in  life.  They  filled  a  place 
in  the  world;  and  because  they  tilled 
it  they  have  lived  on,  while  other 
types,  adapted  to  higher  functions, 
have  outstripped  them,  and  taken  the 
upper  seats  in  the  hierarchy  of  ani- 
mal life. 

At  the  same  time,  there  are  some 
important  considerations  to  be  borne 
in  mind  in  endeavoring  to  understand 
the  reason  for  the  survival  of  such 
lowly-organized  groups  in  the  pres- 
ence of  more  highly-evohed  and  bet- 
ter-endowed races.  In  the  first  place, 
these  straggling  survivors  are  gener- 
ally found  in  out  of-the-way  places, 


far  from  the  fierce  competition  of 
great  continents  or  of  thickly-popu- 
l.ated  districts.  Thus  the  ornithorhyn- 
chus  and  the  echidna,  the  two  lowest 
mammalij  or  quasi-mammals,  live  in 
Australia,  long  isolated  from  the  Asi- 
atic mainland,  and  with  no  higher 
animals  of  any  sort  than  the  kanga- 
roos. The  marsupials  are  similarly 
confined  to  the  Australian  region, 
with  the  solitary  exception  of  the 
opossum.  The  edentates,  another  low 
and  early  group,  including  the  sloths 
and  armadilloes,  belong  to  South 
America,  for  ages  a  separate  island, 
and  only  lately  invaded  by  higher 
types  across  the  newly- raised  isthmus 
of  Panama.  The  lemurs,  the  lowest 
of  the  monkey  tribe,  are  almost  con- 
fined to  Madagascar,  as  are  also  some 
other  primitive  forms.  Among  the 
insectivores  themselves,  the  greater 
number  belong  to  such  ])laces  as  Hai- 
ti, Mauritius,  Java,  and  the  Malay 
Archipelago  generally.  Those  which 
live  upon  the  continents,  and  indeed 
most  of  the  old  types  as  a  whole,  are 
further  enabled  to  drag  on  their  ex- 
istence somehow  by  nocturnal,  sub- 
terranean, or  water-haunting  habits,  as 
well  as  by  living  upon  small  and  in- 
nutritious  food.  Thus  the  leinurs, 
hedgehogs,  and  aye-ayes  feed  by 
night  only ;  the  ornithorhyncus,  oar- 
ed-shrew, and  muskrat  live  in  the  riv- 
ers ;  th°  '  jole  passes  all  his  time 
underground ;  and  the  whole  set 
alike  burrow  or  hide  away  for  the 
best  part  of  their  lives,  feeding  upon 
insects,  like  the  ant-eater,  or  upon 
reptiles  and  carrion,  like  the  armadil- 
lo. Thus,  in  one  way  or  another, 
these  low  forms,  by  accepting  the 
menial  or  dishonored  places  in  the 
comraoii wealth  of  nature,  have  been 
enabled  to  live  on,  in  stealth  and 
quiet,  as  well  as  their  more  highly- 
developed  ai.  1  intelligent  relatives. 

There  is,  however,  one  other  con- 
sideration which  it  would  be  impossi- 
ble to  pass  by  without  leaving  a  very 
false  impression  as  to  these  outcasts 
of  animal  life.  Though  they  all  rep- 
resent low  and  little-developed  types, 
they  are  yet  as  a  rule  liighly  special- 


VIGNETTES  FKOM  NATURE. 


[4(;(5j  iry 


OX 


VII. 


("ASTLE. 


ized  representatives  of  those  types.  | 

Tlioy  have    survived    because    they 

iiould  Jill  some  vacant  ])lace  or  other  : 

and  for  that  place  they  have  become 

fully  specialized.     Thus,  though   the  the    lanes    cut    for   rabbit    shooting 

bram,  the  skeleton,  and  the  other  or-  among  the  gorse  and  bracken,  leads 

gans   of   an   ornithorhynchus  or    an   us  at  last  to  the  old  prehistoric  carth- 


A  STKKi'  pull  up  the  hillside,  through 


echidna  are  lowly  and  poor,  as 
judged  by  a  general  mammalian 
standard,  yet  their  external  form 
is  very  much  more  specialized  tlian 
the  external  f.)rrri  of  the  primi- 
tive mammal  could  j)Ossibly  have 
been.  He  could  not  have  had  the 
broad  duck  bill,  the  webbed  feet,  the 
burrowing  and  water-haunting  adap- 
tations of  the  ornithorhyncus  on  the 
one  liand,  nor  the  spiny  coat  and  cu- 
rious digging  paws  of  the  echidna  on 
tlic  other.  So  with  the  insectivores. 
The  hedgehog  represents  the  primi- 
tive insectivorojis  type,  plus  tlie  fa- 
miliar sharp  prickles,  which  exactly 
recall  those  of  the  echidna :  and,  in- 


work  or  "castle"  which  crowns  the 
top  of  Musbury  Hill.  The  glorious 
view  from  the  breezy  summit  rewards 
one  well  for  the  trouble  of  climbing. 
In  the  foreground  the  furze  or  lieather 
on  the  slopes  is  cpiaintly  divided  into 
formal  squares  of  golden  blossom  by 
the  little  parallel  avenues,  down  which 
innumerable  white  tails  of  rabbits  dis- 
appear twinkling  into  the  burroM's  at 
every  step  we  take.  Near  the  foot  of 
the  hill,  just  before  reaching  the  val- 
ley, an  apple  orchard  stands  thick 
with  pinky  bloom,  a  good  promise 
for  the  cider  season  ;  and  the  trunks, 
blown  all  one  way  by  the  wind,  are 
almost  hidden  from  sight  by  the  lux- 


deed,  the  tenrec  of  Mauritius  is  a  uriance  rf  their  lovely  burden.  IJe- 
hedgehog  in  an  early  stage  of  evolu-iyond,  ag.iin,  the  broad  alluvial  level 
tion,  with  the  spines  only  half  devel- '  stretches  away  to  westward,  with  the 
)ped.     The  mole  in  like  manner  rep- 1  Axe  meandering  in   S's    through  its 


resents  the  same  primitive  insectivo- 
rous type,  plus  the  peculiar  powerful 
shovel  h;in<ls.  the  hidden  eye,  thecov- 


midst;  while  in  the  distance  the  rus- 
set ploughed  fields  among  the  mea- 
dows on   the  opposite  range  betray 


ered  ear,  and  the  close  fur,  which  fit  i  the  red  triassic    soil   of    Devonshire, 
it  so  well  for  its  underground  life.    It 'Looking  along  the  river's  course,  a 
is  just  the  same  with  tiie  scaly  armor  glimpse   of  sea  closes   the  vista  to 
of  the  armadillo,  and  the  long  snout :  wards    Seaton  —  a   mere    blue    bay, 
or  brush  clad  hind  feet  of  the  ant- i  hemmed  in  between  the  red  cliff  of 


eater.  In  every  case  these  low  forms 
have  only  survived  through  a  singu- 
lar combination  of  favoring  circum- 
stances—  isolated  position,  unusual 
habits,   s|)ecial  protective  armor    or 


Axmouth  on  the  one  hand  and  the 
taller  white  chalk  bluffs  of  Beer  Head 
and  Branscombe  on  the  other.  But 
it  is  not  wholly  for  the  sake  of  the 
view  that  I  have  toiled  up  the  ?brupt 


concealment,  immense  ada[)tatioa  to  \  gradient  of  Musbury  Castle  this  clear 
peculiar  needs.  What  can  be  more  May  morning.  Among  the  fiinty 
mteresting  than  to  notice  the  inde-j  piles  of  the  old  earthworks — once 
pendent  occurrence  of  the  very  same  |  the  border  fortress  of  the  iJurotriges 
device  of  spiny  mail  in  two  creatures  i  against  their  Damnonian  foes — a  lit- 
80  unlike  in  structure,  yet  so  like  in  |  tie  flower  grows  fi-om  year  to  year, 
habit,  as  the  echidna  and  the  hedge-  which  is  found  nowhere  else  in  the 
hog?  But  if  I  go  on  preaching  in  j  neighborhood  for  many  miles;  aid  it 
this  way,  I  shall  never  carry  my  |  is  to  get  a  few  sprigs  of  this  rare 
hedgehog  home.  flower  that  I  have  come  up  here  to 

day,  as  is  my  yearly  wont.  I  have 
just  pulled  it  lip,  root  and  all,  out  of 
a  chink  in  the  rubble  this  moment ; 
and  I  shall  take  it  home  in  mv  liJt'e 


16  [467] 


VIGNETTEa  FROM  NATURE. 


tin  case  by-and-by  to  examine  it  at 
my  leimire  heicafter,  and  make  quite 
sure  about  Home  odd  small  points  in 
its  mode  of  flowering  whose  meaning 
and  purnose  I  have  not  yet  been  able 
thoroughly  to  understand. 

Meanwhile,  what  a  curious  fact  it 
is,  this  regular  recurrence  of  the  same 
plants  and  aninuils  in  the  same  situ- 
tioiis  from  season  to  season !  When 
once  you  have  learned  a  little  district 
thoroughly,  it  is  wonderful  how  con- 
stant the  geographical  distribution  of 
its  fauna  and  flora  always  remains. 
In  one  marshy  spot  hereabout,  and 
one  alone,  I  find,  summer  after  sum- 
mer, the  sundew  and  the  bog  aspho- 
del, fn  one  lane,  from  time  imme- 
morial, the  green  hellebore  has 
flowered,  and  nowhere  else.  On  the 
cliff's  to  eastward,  the  wood  pigeons 
always  build  their  nest ;  on  those  to 
the  west  I  have  never  rou8(  d  a  single 
bird.  There  are  certain  pools  in  the 
little  stream  which  rises  on  the  castle 
where  a  certain  fixed  number  of  small- 
ish trout  are  always  found ;  but  in  the 
branch  that  comes  down  from  the 
green-sand  opposite  only  stickleback 
and  miller's  thumbs  are  to  be  caught. 
In  fact,  every  part  of  nature  is  a  con- 
stant equilibrium :  there  are  certain 
species  fitted  for  certain  places,  and  in 
those  places  only  they  exist. 

This  balance  of  life  is  very  seldom 
interfered  with  in  any  way.  Now 
and  then  new  obtrusive  species  push 
their  way  in:  now  and  then  fresh 
varieties  develop  and  slowly  oust  the 
older  forms ;  but  on  the  whole  the  in- 
tricate interdependence  of  all  parts  on 
one  another  is  so  great  that  very  little 
change  ever  takes  place.  As  hi  the 
village  below  there  is  always  a  baker, 
and  a  butcher,  and  a  doctor,  and  a 
parson,  and  a  grave  digger,  each  ful- 
filling his  own  function,  and  each 
dependent  upon  the  rest  for  support, 
so  in  the  broader  world  of  plant  and 
animal  life  upon  the  castle  here  there 
is  always  a  fairly  fixed  number  of 
species  and  individuals,  all  fitting  in 
together  into  the  marvelous'y  compli- 
cated scheme  of  checks  and  counter- 
checks, of  mutual  services  and  recip- 


rocal needs.  There  are  always  just 
enough  bees  to  fertilize  the  heather, 
and  just  enough  heather  to  feed  the 
bees,  hedge-hogs  to  keep  down  the 
wire-worms,  and  dragon-flies  to  chase 
the  gnats.  In  every  bit  of  boggy 
ground  you  find  boggy  plants ;  and 
above  them  yoi'  find  bog-haunting  in- 
sects, on  which  the  waterside  birds 
perpetually  prey.  Wherever  there  is 
a  chance  for  a  plant  or  animal  to 
make  a  living  for  itself,  there  you 
And  some  creature  living  and  adapted 
to  its  place.  No  nook  in  nature  is 
too  small  or  inconsiderable  to  be  oc- 
cupied. Countless  seeds  and  eggs 
and  germs  are  being  scattered  broad- 
cast over  the  whole  face  of  the  earth 
every  day  and  all  day  long,  and  those 
of  them  which  find  their  fitting  place 
live  and  thrive,  while  those  of  them 
which  fall  on  the  wrong  ground  die 
out  and  disappear  at  once. 

Ill  such  a  complex  balance  of  life 
as  this  it  might  at  first  sight  seem  as 
though  no  new  forms  could  ever  bo 
evolved  Where  the  conditions  to 
be  complied  with  are  so  numerous, 
where  the  interaction  is  so  all-embrac- 
ing, surely  it  must  be  hard  enough 
just  to  keep  up  the  ordinary  require- 
ments of  each  species,  without  ever 
rising  to  higher  and  still  higher  com- 
plications again  But  if  we  look  a 
little  closer  into  the  problem,  we  shall 
see  that  this  very  complexity  itself 
produces  the  necessity  for  further  ad- 
vance. Every  plant  and  every  animal 
must  succeed,  not  only  partia'ly,  but 
always  and  all  along  the  line.  The 
seed  must  escape  the  attacks  of  birds 
and  animals,  for  if  it  is  once  eaten  up 
it  can  never  grow  to  be  a  plant  at  all. 
The  young  shoot  must  escape  the 
grubs  and  locusts;  the  flower  must 
open  and  secure  its  fertilization  ;  the 
fruit  must  set  and  ripen  its  seeds ;  the 
seed  again  must  be  dispereed  and 
reach  its  proper  soil  and  position. 
Every  plant  which  fails,  no  matter 
how  little,  in  any  one  of  these  par- 
ticulars, is  utterly  lost.  Its  chance  of 
producing  posterity  is  wholly  gone 
from  it.  And  the  same  is  true  of 
animals.     The  butterfly,  for  example, 


VIGNETTES  FROM  NATURE. 


[4aaj  17 


(ind  food  aw  a  caterpillar,  and 
escape   the  eyes  of    birds;  it 


4alis 


agaiiiHt 


ad- 
inal 
but 
The 
irds 
I  up 

all. 

the 

lUBt 

the 
the 
and 
ion. 
ktter 
jar- 

of 
Irone 

of 
fple, 


must 
must 

must  hide  itself  away  as  a  chry 
it  must  make  itself  proof 
frosts  and  rains ;  it  must  hit  upon 
sunny  weather  in  its  full-tiedged 
winged  form ;  it  must  find,  woo, 
charm,  and  secure  its  mate ;  it  must 
lay  its  eggs  on  the  i)roper  plants,  and 
in  a  sa'e  position.  Thus  every  exist- 
ing individual  of  every  species  is  the 
descendant  of  countless  ancestors  on 
"ach  side,  every  one  of  whom  must 
necessarily  have  fulfilled  all  the  com- 
plex conditions  of  existence  at  every 
moment  of  their  lives.  If  they  had 
not  done  so,  it  would  not  be  here  en 
evidence  to  answer  for  their  success. 

However,    as    all    individuals    are 
liable  to  vary  a  little  individually — 
to   be   lighter    or   di',rker,   larger   or 
smaller,  longer  in  this  limb  and  short- 
er in  that,  than  one  another — it  must 
follow  that  each  individual  must  be 
slightly  better  or  worse  adapted  for 
Kurviving  in  certain   sj)ecial   circum- 
stances than  some  other.     Such  petty 
'ILn'erences  are  for  ever    being    pro- 
duced, and  the  better  are  constantly, 
on  the  average,  living  down  the  worse, 
while  the  worse  are  being  constantly 
weeded  out.     If  at  any  moment  we 
look  at  the  world  as  a  whole,  we  see 
apparent  balance,    nay,    rather   tem- 
porary   balance  ;  every  part  fits  in 
to  evory  other  with  absolute  adapta 
tion.     But    if    we    compare    widely 
different  times  we  see  that  the  balance 
is  always  altering,  that  types  change 
indefinitely  from   age  to  age.     Each 
plant  and  each  auin.ial  fulfills  all  the 
necessary  conditions  of  existence  every 
day  of  its  life,  or  else  ceases  to  exist, 
the  survivors  being  always  those  who 
have  succeeded  in  fulfilling  them ;  but 
then  the  con<litionsare  always  slightly 
changing,  and  so  the  survivors,  from 
time  to  time,  are  slightly  different. 
Every  increase  of  speed  in  the  pur- 
suer is  followed  by   an   increase   of 
speed  in  the  pursued,  since  only  the 
swiftest  will  now  escape ;  every  sharp- 
toothed  squirrel  opens  still  harder  and 
harder  nuts,  and  thus  leaves  the  very 
hardest  aloue  to  produce  future  trees. 


The  squirrel  survives  because  it  can 
crack  nuts  which  other  squirrels  must 
refuse  ;  the  nut  survives  because  it 
can  batfle  the  sipjirrel  which  can  crack- 
so  many  other  luits. 


VIII. 

A  BIG  VIJSSIL  BONE. 

Tmi;  cliff  to  eastward  of  the  village 
consists  of  soft  blue  lias  strata,  inter- 
spersed  with   harder   layers   of  con- 
creted limestone  ;  and  both   deposits 
are   worked  by   the   quarrymen    for 
different  pur|)Oses.     The  soft  sticky 
clay  of  the  banded  belts  is  used  iu 
making  blue  lias  cement  at  the  little 
mill  beside  the  harboi* — our  one  soli- 
tary manufacturnig   industry — while 
the  intermediate  hard  layers  are  burnt 
for   quicklime    in   the   village   kilns. 
This  morning,  a  message  from  one  of 
the  navvies,  who  knows  my  taste  for 
anticjuities,  brought   me    up   here  in 
hot  haste  from  the    breakfast  table, 
for  fear  the  rival  collector  should  be 
beforehand   with    me   in    securing   a 
splendid    prize.     He   had   found,    he 
said,  a  lot  of  "  verterberries  " — that  is 
our  local  word  for  vertebra) — and  also 
what  he  took  to  be  a  flint  implement. 
One   can   never   trust   the    scientific 
diagnosis  of  a  quarryman,  so  I  was- 
not  quite  sure  whether  he  had  really 
hit  upon  a  big  saurian  in  the  secondary 
lias,    or   upon   some   mammaliaif  re 
mains  in  the  quaternary  gravel  which: 
caps  the  cliff,  and  which  the  workmen, 
have  to  clear  away  in  the  course  of 
their   excavations.      Fortunately   for 
me,  it  turned  out  to  be  the  latter:  for 
I  do   not  busy  myself  nuich   aboin. 
"  dragons,"    as   our  navvies  call  the 
great  saw-toothed  saurians,  but  I  am 
always  interested  in  a  stone   instru- 
ment, or  anything  else  which  bears 
dix'ectly   upon   the   early   history   of 
mankind.     The  bones  proved  to  be 
three    fragments     of    a     mammoth 
skeleton;  and  close  beside  them  in 
the  gravel  lay  the  sharp  flint  knife  in 
situ,  with  which  perhaps  some  palaeo- 
lithic huntoi"  had  scraped  the  bones  of 
his  huge   prey   a  hundred   thousand 
years  ago,  when  the  little  river  stilL 


lb  (40UJ 


VIGNETTES  FROM  NATURE. 


flowed  at  this  higher  level,  thirty 
yards  above  the  bed  of  its  existing 
channel.  I  have  pocketed  the  flint 
after  a  little  commercial  transaction 
with  the  navvy  otfhand :  and  now  I 
am  mounting  guard  over  the  mam- 
moth bones,  waiting  till  a  relay  of 
workmen  arrives  from  the  village 
below  to  dig  them  all  out  for  me  care- 
fully as  they  stand. 

Ft    is     common    enough    to    near 
visitors  at  a  geological  museum  say 
to  one  another,  "  Ah,  everything  used 
to  be  so  much  bigger  in  those  days  " 
— the  exact  period  to  which  they  thus 
refer   being   no   doubt   the   cosmical 
equivalent  of  that  familiar  historical 
epoch,  the  olden  time.  Looking  about 
them   at   the  big  fossils  Avhich  form 
the  most  striking  features  of  the  ex- 
liibition,  they  picture  to  themselves  a 
world  where  the  sea  swarmed  with 
gigantic  enaliosaurians  and  huge  ceta- 
ceans, where  the   land   was  covered 
with    deinotheria     and      mastodons, 
where  all  the  birds  wero  moas,  all  the 
lizards   were  crocodiles,    and  all  the 
snails     were    monstrous   ammonitL's. 
Everywhere  they  seem  to  find  in  fossil 
forms  a  bigger  animal  of  each  kind 
than   any  now   existing.     They   see 
here  an  enormous  Irish  elk,  there  an 
immense  extinct  sloth,  vonder  a  vast 
prototype  of  the  little  modern  arma- 
dillo, and  somewhere  else  a  turtle  ten 
limes  as  big   as    the  greatest  living 
member  of  the  tortoise  group.    They 
forget  that   the  huge  saurians  were 
secondary  animals,    while  the  deino- 
therium  was  tertiary,  the   mammoth 
quaternary,    and    the    moa    all   but 
modern.     They  forget  that  the  age 
of  the   great  ammonites  was  almost 
•over   before   the    age   of    the    great 
lizards   set  in.     They  forget  that  the 
^lyptodon   lived   in   Sou>;h  America, 
while  the   big  elk  lived  in  Ireland. 
By  that  kind  of  false  historical  per- 
spective which  throws  all  the  distant 
past   into    a    single    line,   they   roll 
together    millions    and     millions    of 
years  ;  and  so   they  get  a  distorted 
geological  picture,  which  really  quite 
reverses  the  actual  facts  as  to  the  rel- 
ative size  of  animals  in  the  past  and 
the  present. 


As  a  matter  of  fact  it  seem.-*  prob- 
able that  our  actual  fauna  and  flora 
are  on  the  whole   not   only  quite  as 
big  as  any  previous  ones,  but  even 
a  great  deal  bigger.       If     we    take 
single  instances,    no   known  extinct 
animal  was   as  large  as  some  of  our 
modern   whales:  if  we  look   at  the 
ensemble  of  our  existing  species,  no 
known   period    comprised   so   many 
large   forms  as  we  can  show  at  the 
present  day  in  our  three  or  four  great 
cetaceans,  our  two  elephants,  our  hip- 
popotamus, our  rhinoceros,  our  bisons, 
our    giraffe,    our    walrus,    and    our 
horses.     These  would  probably  form 
a  total  assemblage  of  larger  average 
size   than   any  previous  epoch  could 
produce.     Similarly,  in  almost  every 
special  class,   we    could    apparently 
show  larger  species  at  the  present  day 
than  any  which  we  know  to  have  ex- 
isted in  fossil  forms.     Our  whale  is 
the   biggest    known    mammal ;    our 
gigantic  salamander   is   the  biggest 
known  amphibian ;  probably  our  sun- 
fish,  our  tunnies,  our  sharks,  and  our 
devil  fish  are  eacli  in  their  way  larger 
than  almost  any  previous  fishes — one 
living    'hark     actually    attaining    a 
length  of  forty  feet.     No  fossil  bi- 
valve molluscs  to  my  knowledge  are 
as  big  as  the  common  Mediterranean 
pinna,  or  as  that  giant  clam,  the  tri- 
dacna,    whose   shell  is  so  commonly 
used   as   a  basin   for  fountains.     In 
fact,  there  are  only  two  important 
groups,  the  birds  and  the  reptiles,  in 
which    extinct    species    were    mucli 
larger   than    existing   ones ;    and    in 
these  two  groups  the  decrease  is  evi- 
dently due  to  the  later  supremacy  of 
the  mammalian  type. 

Similarly,  if  we  take  many  com- 
paratively modern  lines  of  descent, 
we  shall  find  that  the  horses,  the  deer, 
the  elephants,  and  several  other  now 
dominant  groups  of  animals  have 
been  steadily  increasing  in  size  from 
the  earliest  epoch  of  their  appearance 
te  the  recent  period.  And  among  the 
great  extinct  creatures,  some — like 
the  moa  and  the  dodo — have  only 
quite  recently  been  killed  off  ;  others, 
like  the  Irish  elk  and  the  mammoth, 
belong  to  the  very  latest   geological 


VIGNETTES  FROM  NATURE. 


[470]  10 


period ;  and  yet  others,  though  of 
somewhat  higher  antiquity,  like  the 
animals  of  the  Paris  basin,  have  left 
representatives  nearly,  if  not  quite, 
as  big  as  themselves.  The  teeth  of 
what  seeras  to  have  been  the  biggest 
known  fish — a  prodigious  shark — are 
dredged  up  among  the  modern  ooze  of 
the  Pacific ;  and  though  no  individu- 
als quite  large  enough  to  have  owned 
them  have  ever  been  observed,  yet 
people  who  believe  in  the  8ea-serj)ent 
may  well  expect  one  to  turn  up  in  the 
flesh  at  some  future  period,  while  even 
more  skeptical  persons  must  still  ad- 
mit that  they  have  become  extinct  at 
a  very  late  date. 

The  explanation  of  the  existence 
and  extinction  of  extremely  large 
animals  in  each  group  seems  to  be 
this.  As  a  whole,  evolution  appears 
-  to  tend  towards  an  increase  of  size  m 
some  members,  at  'east,  of  every 
class.  13ut  this  increase  is  most  no- 
ticeable among  members  of  what  is, 
for  the  time  being,  the  dominant 
1  class ;  and,  when  another  class  out- 
strips it  in  development,  the  new 
dominant  kinds  are  apt  to  live  down 
the  bigger  species  among  their  pre- 
decessors. Thus,  in  the  very  earliest 
times,  the  muUusks  were  apparently 
the  dominant  class  ;  and  very  big  cut- 
tle fish  and  other  cephaloi)0(ls  were 
frequent — though  none  of  them,  per- 
haps, were  quite  so  big  as  our  own 
gigantic  squids.  At  a  later  date  the 
reptiles  were  developed,  and  grew  to 
be  the  leading  race  on  earth ;  and 
during  that  period  the  bigger  saurians 
attained  to  extremely  large  dimen- 
sions. Ever  since  the  opening  of  the 
tertiary  period,  however,  the  mam- 
mals liave  become  the  forefront  of  the 
animal  series,  and  big  mammals  have 
everywhere  replaced  big  reptiles. 
But  there  were  some  few  insulated 
spots  where  mammals  did  not  pene- 
trate for  a  long  time,  and  here  birds 
were  the  leading  class.  In  such  cases 
terrestrial  birds  grew  to  be  very  large, 
indeed. 

On  this  simple  principle  we  can  ac- 
count for  almost  all  the  big  creatures 
now  existing    upon    earth.     In    the 


ffreat  continents  they  are  almost  all 
dominant  mammals ;  for  example,  the 
elephant,  rhinoceros,  hippopotamus, 
giraffe  and  bison.  Wherever  we  get 
1;  irge  species  of  lower  mammals  or  of 
the  inferior  classes,  they  are  invari- 
ably found  either  on  insulated  latids 
or  on  lands  but  recently  united  to  the 
continents.  Thus,  the  great  fossil 
sloths,  armadillos,  and  other  eden- 
tates belong  to  the  insular  fauna  of 
South  America,  where  no  higher 
mammals  existed ;  as  soon  as  the 
mammalian  types  of  the  northern  con- 
tinent began  to  make  thei  way  across 
the  quite  modern  Isthmus  of  Panama, 
all  the  bigger  native  forms  became 
extinct.  Just  in  the  same  way,  Aus- 
tralia still  possesses  a  very  large  mar- 
supial in  the  great  kangaroo ;  but  if 
the  Australian  region  had  ever  been 
joined  to  Asia,  the  Asiatic  carnivores 
would  soon  have  exterminated  this 
stupid  and  defenseless  herbivore.  So, 
too,  the  raoa  was  developed  in  New 
Zealand,  where  there  were  no  mam- 
mals at  all,  and  where  the  apteryx  is 
still  the  highest  native  animal,  now 
that  the  moa  has  been  exterminated 
by  man.  In  like  manner,  the  ostriches 
and  rheas,  the  cassowaries  and  emus, 
and  all  the  other  big  struthious  birds 
belong  either  to  the  islands  of  the 
Australian  and  Malay  group,  where 
they  have  but  little  mammalian  com- 
petition, and  that  of  a  low  grade,  or 
to  South  Africa  and  South  America, 
both  of  which  were  long  equally 
insulated,  and  where  most  of  the 
l".iima  is  still  of  a  very  inferior  type. 
Similarly  with  reptiles  :  the  big  sau- 
rians are  all  dead,  except  in  the  case 
of  the  crocodiles  and  alligators,  which 
haunt  fresh  waters  alone;  and  fresh 
waters,  we  know,  are  almost  as  insu- 
lar in  their  way  as  islands  themselves. 
The  Galapagos  Archipelago  has  for 
its  highest  inhabitant  a  monstrous 
lizard.  Among  amphibians  again, 
the  gigantic  salamander  belongs  to 
Japan. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  two  great 
continents  which  developed  the  high- 
er mammalian  fauna  —  Europe  and 
Asia  in  the  east,  North  America  in 


20  [471 1 


VIGNETTES  FROM  NATURE. 


the  west — have  no  very  largo  birds, 
no  very  liirge  terreHtrial  reptilcH,  no 
very   largo   ainphibiaiiH;     and    their 
lower   iiiamiiials   are   all    small    and 
skulking  species — mere  rats,  hedge- 
hogs,   shrews,   and  nu)le8,  instead  of 
big  sloths,  kangaroos,  or  megatheria. 
In  the  oceans,  where  mammals  are  at 
gome   dl.^advantage,  and  where  they 
have  not  yet  lirmly  established  them- 
selves, big  lish  still  abound.     Never- 
theless     ven  here,  the  whales,  por- 
poises, w  ulruses,  seals,  manatees,  and 
other   aiiiiatic  mammals  ai'e  pushing 
them  hard;  and   we  know  that  the 
sharks  and  rays,  the  monsters  of  their 
kind,  as  well  as  many  other  big  tribes 
of  iish,  are  now  in  their  decadence. 
Thus  it  woiild  seem  that  everywhere 
some  animals  of  the  dominant  types 
are   the  largest,  and  that  mammals, 
therefore,  now  tend  all  over  the  world 
to  replace  the  large  members  of  in- 
ferior groups. 


IX. 


in 


VERONICA. 

This  pretty  little  blue  flower,  grow- 
ing so  abundantly  beside  the  footpath, 
is  called  in  English  spee«lwell,  and  in 
botanical   Latin   veronica.   .  Thereby 
hangs  a  sufKciently  pretty  legendary 
tale.    Everybody  knows  how  the  nap- 
kin with  which  a  compassionate  maid- 
en wiped  the  face  of  Christ  on  the 
morning  of  the  crucifixion  bore  ever 
after  the  imprint  of  the  divine  fea- 
tures.    The  miraculous  portrait  thus 
preserved  as  the  one  genuine  picture 
of  Our  Lord  was  known  in  a  mongrel 
Greek  and  Latin  phrase  as  the  vera 
icon,  the  true  eikon  or  image  of  the 
martyred    Saviour.       By   a    natural 
transposition  of  sound  and  sense,  the 
unknown  maiden  was  popularly  can- 
onized as  St    Veronica,  just  as  the 
real  blood  of  Christ,  the  Sangre  Real 
or  Sang  Reel,  preserved  by  Joseph  of 
Arimathea,  became  the  Saint  Greal 
and  the  Holy  Grail  of  mediaeval  le- 
gends.   At  some  later  period,  by  a 
pretty  conceit,  some  poetical  botanist 
or  other — I  think  it  was  Tournefort, 


though  1  dpn't  know  whether  he  in 
vented  the  name  himself  or  only  bor- 
rowed it  from  the  early  herbalists — 
transferred  the  title  of  veronica  to 
this  lovely  little  blue  blossom,  because 
it  seemed  to  him  exactly  to  mirror  in 
its  delicate  hue  the  deep  azure  color 
of  the  sky  abov( .     It  was  the  vera 
icon  of  the  open  heaven,  and  so  he 
called  it,  too,  veronica.     The  conceit 
is  far-fetched,  no  doubt ;  but  it  is  a 
pleasant  one  to  me;  and  I  can  never 
see  the  first  speedwells  opening  their 
familiar  blue  flowers  in  the  spring 
time  without  feeling  that  the  legend 
throws  an  added  charm  for  ray  mind 
around  their  simple  native  prettiness. 
Our  thoughts  about  nature  are  of 
ten  too  largely  interwoven  with  hard 
technicalities  concerning  rotate  corol- 
las and  pedicellate  racemes ;  and  I  for 
my  part  am  not  ashamed  to  confess 
that  I  like  sometimes  to  ;<ee  the  dry 
light  of  science  diversified  with  some 
more  fallacious  scintillations  of  the 
litene  hummiiorcs  or  even  with  some 
will-o'-the-wihp  of  pure  poetical  imag- 
ination.    After  all,  these  things  too 
are  themselves  matter  for  the  highest 
science ;   and  ♦hat  kind  of  scientific 
man  who  cannot  recognize  their  use 
and  interest  is  himself  as  yet  but  a 
one-sided  creature,  a  chemical  or  bio- 
logical Gradgrind,  still  spelling  away 
blunderingly  at  the  weak  and  beg- 
garly elements  of  knowledge,  instead 
of  skimming  the  great  book  of  nati've 
easily  through,   with   a  free  gUnco 
from  end  to  end.     Surely  there  arc 
more  things  in  heaven  and  eartn  than 
are  dreamt  of  in  Gradgrind's  philoso- 

For  example,  there  is  the  beauty 
of  the  veronica.  Even  if  the  Grad- 
grinds  do  not  see  it,  you  and  I  do ; 
and  it  is  clearly  the  business  of  science 
to  explain  this  difference  between  us 
and  Gradgrind,  as  well  as  to  explain 
why  we  have  the  sense  of  beauty  at 
all.  There  are  two  kinds  of  onc- 
sidedness  which  the  real  man  of 
science  will  do  well  to  avoid.  Thor- 
eau,  who  loved  nature  as  few  men 
have  loved  it,  nevertheless  sneered  at 
geology  as  a  lot  of  old  broken  shells : 


VIONETTKS  FliOM  NATl'UE. 


[478]  21 


he  in 
y  bor- 

lists — 

U.'i    to 

ror  in 
color 
ver<f 
so  he 
onceit 
is  :i 
never 
tlieir 
prinor 
lej^ond 
mind 
tincss. 
ire  of 
hard 
corol- 
d  I  foi- 
onfess 
16  dry 
some 
of  the 
1  some 
\  imag- 
gs  too 
lighest 
ientific 
}jr  nse 
but  a 
)r  bio- 


tliiit  was  iIk-  (»;it'-sitU(hieKs  of  llie  po- 
etical and  arli.'lio  leniperanienl.  lie 
lliought  he  was  sliowing  iiis  own  hii 
periority  of  mind,  when  he  was  really 
showing  only  his  narrowness  of  view. 
On  the  other  hand,  (rradgi'ind  and 
DryaHduiit  sneer  at  the  beauty  of  the 
veronica  ;  that  is  the  one-sidedness  of 
the  })ractical,  technical,  and  scientilic 
temperament.  The  true  man  of 
science  will  reconcile  the  two.  He 
will  see  no  incomi)atibility  between  | 
loving  the  birds  and  beasts  as  well  as 
Thoreau,  and  yet  taking  an  interest  \ 
in  the  old  broken  shells  as  well  as 
Lyell  or  Murchison ;  between  knowing 
all  about  the  conduplicate  cotyledons 
with  Dryasdust,  anil  admiring  the  au- 
tumn fields  with  Millet  or  with  Uus- 
kin.  The  two  stamens  and  the  united 
})ctals  of  the  veronica  are  facts  which 
demand  explanation  in  one  way ;  the 
blue  color  and  tlie  touching  prettiness 
of  the  same  veronica  are  facts  which 
equally  demand  explanation  in  anoth- 
er way :  and  I  for  my  part  can  see  no 
reason  why  the  one  set  of  facts  should 
not  be  just  as  worthy  of  scientific  ex- 
amination as  the  other. 

Luckily  for  us,  we  have  now  at  last 
got  a  philosophy  of  life  which  enables 
us,  as  it  seems  to  me,  to  explain  both 
on  very  similar  principles.  The  tubu- 
lar shape  of  the  speedwell's  corolla 
and  the  irregularity  of  its  stamens,  as 
well  as  the  peculiar  one-sidedness  of 
its  petals,  are  all  due  to  the  necessities 
of  its  fertilization  by  insects.  In  that 
way,  and  in  no  other,  it  secures  the 
safe  deposit  of  its  pollen  on  the  head 
of  the  bee  or  the  beetle,  and  its  further 
safe  conveyance  to  the  pistil  of  some 
neighboring  blossom.  For  just  the 
same  reason  it  has  bright  blue  petals 
to  attract  the  eyes  of  the  insect ;  and 
those  petals  are  streaked  w^ith  dainty 
darker  or  lighter  lines,  which  guide 
the  friendly  visitor  straight  to  the 
honey-glands.  That,  put  briefly,  is 
why  the  veronica  is  blue  and  deli- 
cately veined. 

The  reason  why  we  consider  these 
col  rs,  meant  to  attract  the  insect,  as 
pretty,  seems  to  me  equally  obvious. 
We  are  the  descendants  of  ancient 


arboreal  ancestors,  who  themselves 
sftught  their  food  among  bright  or- 
ange and  blue  and  crimson  fruits  in 
tropical  fore>ts  ;  and  those  fruits  were 
specially  colored  to  allure  their  eyes, 
just  j-.s  the  sj)eedwells  and  primroses 
and  k»uttercups  are  specially  colored 
to  allure  the  eyes  of  bee  or  butterfly. 
And  further,  as  the  eyes  (»f  tli'i  bees 
are  so  developed  that  these  colors  at- 
tract them,  the  eyes  of  our  pre-human 
ancestors  must  have  been  so  developed 
MS  to  be  attracted  by  the  similar  col- 
ors of  oranges  and  mangoes,  and  ter- 
tiary plums  or  peaches.  Flowers  and 
fruits  alike  depend  upon  animals  for 
fertilization  or  dispersion ;  and  alike 
possess  the  same  enticements  of  sweet 
juices,  fragrant  scents,  and  bright  col- 
ors. Hence  it  seems  natural  to  con 
elude  that  the  senses  of  animals  have 
been  evolved  in  strict  correlation  with 
such  stimulants,  and  that  the  thnll  of 
pleasure  which  we  now  derive  from 
beautiful  colors  is  in  some  degree  a 
vague  and  persistent  echo  of  feelings 
long  since  experienced  by  our  fru- 
givorous  ancestors. 

And  shall  we  therefore  say  witl 
the  writer  in  last  week's  Natwe, 
which  I  have  brought  out  in  my 
pocket,  "  We  are  landed  at  the  rather 
humiliating  conclusion  that  a  sense  of 
the  beautiful,  and  an  admiration  for 
the  forms  and  colors  of  nature,  is  only 
a  strongly  developed  instinct  inherited 
from  the  lower  animals"?  Oh  no, 
surely  far  otherwise.  We  have  not 
so  learned  Darwin  and  Spencer.  As 
just  now  I  read  the  writer's  words, 
lying  here  in  the  sunshine  on  the 
bank,  I  picked  this  blue  speedwell, 
and  gazed  closely  at  it,  and  I  saw  de- 
nial looking  f«,t  me  from  every  line  on 
its  face.  We  might  as  well  say  that 
the  artistic  sense  of  a  Burne  Jones  or 
a  Kosetti  was  a  survival  from  the  ar- 
tistic sense  of  the  cave-men  who 
etched  reindeers  in  the  Perigord  grot- 
toes, or  that  the  mechanical  genius  of 
a  Watt  or  an  Edison  was  an  instinct 
inherited  from  the  black  fellows  who 
chipped  flints  ages  ago  besides  the 
Somme  at  St.  Acheul.  Darwinism 
does  not  degrade  our  race — it  elevates 


92  [ir.il 


VIGNKTTKS  FHOM  NATUKK. 


!t.  For  the  fiill  of  man  it  nubstitutcH 
tho  liHC  of  iimii ;  for  a  hopelesHly  <Ii>- 
jrraded  lapse  from  ai»  imaginary  Par- 
adise in  the  \mHt  it  HubHtitutoH  a  hope- 
ful pro/^resH  towards  a  perfectible  and 
reali/ablo  Paradise  in  the  future. 

The  love  for  tho  blue  color  in  the 
veronica  ia  doubtless  due  in  its  inctp- 
lion  to  tho  primitive  love  for  color 
common  to  all  frugivorous  races. 
Hut  it  in  not  only  that.  If  it  were  a 
mere  survival  it  wouhl  bo  weaker  in 
US  than  in  tho  monkeys  ;  wheren;!  it 
is,    as    a    matter  of    fact,   infii.itol 


inni.iioiy 
'S,  iiicliKl- 


Ntron{j;er,  We  all  of  us — ye 
iuf^  even  Grad<^rind  himself — love  the 
little  blue  veronica  with  a  love  of 
which  no  lower  animal  is  capable. 
Wo  have  gone  on  increasing  and 
widening  our  love  for  color — wo  have 
employed  it  first  for  personal  decora- 
tion, in  flowers,  feathers,  gems,  and 
l)igraents  ;  then  for  the  decoration  of 
our  houses  and  belongings;  then  for 
painting  proper  and  true  art.  Thus 
at  last  the  mere  beauty  of  color  by 
itself,  apart  from  other  emotional  as- 
sociations, has  become  far  more 
potent  with  us,  and  especially  with 
civilized  man,  than  with  our  early 
progenitors  or  with  our  four-handed 
cousins.  We  can  admire  sunsets  and 
siun'ises  at  which  they  would  gaze  in 
stolid  indiflference.  Wo  can  admire 
autumn  hues,  and  distant  liills,  and 
countless  efl'ects  of  cloud  or  light  on 
sea  and  sky  and  landscape.  And  to 
all  these  wo  add  a  thousand  higher 
elements  of  the  sense  of  beauty.  Wo 
feel  at  onco  th;;t  the  speedwell  has 
symmetry  of  a  autiful  sort,  which 
we  have  Icaniei'  to  ajjjjreciate  more 
than  any  otlier  creatures  in  the  slow 
growth  of  human  ]>roducts,  from  the 
stone  hatchet  to  JJrussels  lace  and 
Henry  II.  i)ottery,  fiom  the  circular 
hut  to  Salisbury  and  (.'hartre?*.  W^ 
feel,  also,  the  beauty  of  its  home  as- 
sociations, of  its  connected  legendary 
lore^  of  its  old  English  name,  of  its 
domestic  familiarity.  We  feel  the 
reflection  upon  it  of  much  poetical 
faM^  and  dainty  conceit.  All  these 
go  to  make  up  our  sense  of 
ty  when  we  look  at  :^  speedwell. 


just  as  much  as  tho  blue  color  and  tho 
primitive  instinct  of  our  semi-human 
progenitors.  Do  not  let  us  shut  our 
eyes,  like  Mr.  Ituskin,  to  tho  element- 
ary facts  disclosed  by  biology ;  but 
do  not  let  us,  on  tho  other  hand,  try 
to  resolve  our  whole  complex  nature 
into  ({uadrunianous  elements.  Alan 
is  none  tho  less  man  because  wo  be- 
Tu've  that  his  very  remote  ancestor 
was  a  sort  of  distant  cousin  to  tin; 
gorilla.  We  to-day  are  none  tho  more 
gorillas  for  all  »hat. 


X. 

GITELDEU   ROSE. 

CoMiNd  out  here  into  tho  alder 
copse  this  bright  breezy  summer  even- 
ing, in  search  of  the  sweet-scented 
butterlly  orchids  which  grow  so 
abundantly  in  tho  marshy  spots  beside 
the  bourne,  I  have  not  only  gathered 
a  thick  handful  of  those  quaint  green- 
tipped  spiky  flowers  themselves,  but 
have  also  lighted  unexpectedly  upon 
tho  fn  St  full  bloAvn  guelder  rose  of  the 
season.  The  bush  hangs  out  of  tho 
hedge  which  severs  the  copse  fi'oni 
the  Four  Acre ;  and  my  eye  was  at- 
tracted a  hundred  yards  off  by  tho 
great  bunches  of  snow-white  blossom, 
drooping  in  massive  trusses  from  the 
long  sprays  that  outgrow  tho  shorter 
and  stiffer  branches  of  tho  over-blown 
hawthorns.  Guelder  roses  are  by  no 
means  rare  flowers,  yet  I  always  like 
to  pick  a  piece  or  two,  because  of  the 
curious  peculiarity  which  causes  them 
to  be  cultivated  so  much  in  our  shrub- 
beries. Not  that  this  I'cal  woodland 
bush-flower  has  any  close  resend>lance 
to  tho  round  balls  of  distorted  blos- 
soms that  our  gardeners  and  florists 
have  been  at  so  much  pains  to  pro- 
duce for  the  delectation  of  tasteless 
patrons.  In  this  its  native  state  tho 
guelder  rose  has  a  bunch  of  small 
white,  or  rather  cream-colored  flowers, 
for  the  most  part  a  good  deal  like 
those  of  the  elder ;  and,  indeed,  the 
very  name  is  said  to  be  a  mere  philo- 
logical blunder  for  elder-rose,  and 
to    have    no    real    connection   with 


VIONETTKS  FUOM  NATUUK, 


[474]  8* 


(tiutldurlaihl  in  uiiy  uuy.  Still 
jiiuro  cloHttly  ilu  ihu  littlo  cruuin- 
colored  llowtn-H  ruHcniblo  tho  bloHHoins 
of  the  wuyiiiniig  trie,  u  nioiubtT  of 
the  Hnnio  gunus,  wIioho  mealy  leuvoH 
mid  littlo  bluo-bluck  bfrricH  aro 
familiar  objects  towards  tlio  close  of 
autumn  in  every  taiij^led  overgrown 
hedge-row.  The  guelder  roso  <lilTers, 
liowever,  from  tho  wayfaring  tree  in 
one  conspicuous  jtarticular.  It  has  a, 
row  of  largf;  snow-white  Howei-s  on 
tho  outside  of  each  bunch,  at  least 
twenty  times  asldg  us  the  central  ones. 
They  look  almost  as  if  they  were  tho 
blossoms  of  some  other  and  larger 
])lant,  deftly  arranged  or  ])inned  by 
some  mischievous  boy  around  a  bunch 
of  elder  blossom,  so  as  tft  hoax  tho 
unwary  botanist  with  a  cun  ling  de- 
ception. Jiut  they  aro  real  c(  tuj)onent 
elements  of  the  flower-he.'i  i  for  all 
that;  and  it  is  these  selfMimo  odd, 
overgrown  outer  flowers  which  make 
tho  guelder  rose  so  interesting  a  jdant 
in  tho  eyes  of  tho  evolutioimry  biolo- 
gist. 

Looking  close  at  tho  small  central 
florets,  one  can  see  at  a  glance  that 
each  has  a  littlo  tubular  corolla  of  live 
united  petals,  with  stamens  and  ]>istil 
in  the  center,  enclosing  the  germ  of  a 
future  berry,  liut  tho  big  expanded 
outer  blossoms  are  built  on  quite  .a 
different  ))lan.  They  consist  entirely 
of  a  largo  flattened  corolla  Avith  four 
or  five  round-edged  lobes,  milk-white 
instead  of  cream-colored,  and  meas- 
uring near  an  inch  across,  instead  of 
being  liardly  larger  than  a  barleycorn. 
Moreover,  most  significant  of  all,  they 
have  no  stamens,  no  j»istil,  and  no 
ovary  containing  an  embryo  fruit. 
They  are  barren  blossoms,  without 
any  other  object  in  life  than  that  of 
bare  display.  What,  then,  is  the  good 
of  them  ? 

Well,  their  jjurpose  is,  no  doubt, 
to  add  extra  attractiveness  to  the 
bunches  of  which  they  form  part. 
All  plants  that  depend  upon  insects 
for  their  fertilization  are  compelled  to 
make  a  great  show  in  order  to  lure 
the  insects  into  paying  them  pro])er 
attention.     In  the  guelder  rose  a  few 


outer  flowers  of  eauih  bunch  are  sacri 
ficed  to  this  particular  purpose.  They 
are  Hi)eciali/X'd  for  the  function  of  at- 
traction, as  the  philosophical  botanists 
would  say.  Tliis  is,  indeed,  a  phe 
iiomenoii  whicdi  occurs  often  enough 
in  many  plants,  though  in  few  so  con- 
spicuously as  in  tho  guelder  rose.  In 
daisies  and  sunflowers,  th(5  outer  flo- 
rets of  each  he.'id  have  their  j)etals 
jtrolonged  into  pink-tipped  or  golden 
rays,  -which  give  tho  compound  bunch 
much  the  appearance  of  a  single  blos- 
som. In  cow-parsnip  and  most  other 
iimb(!llates,  tho  two  outer  petals  of  all 
tho  external  flowers  grow  much  big- 
ger than  their  three  inner  petals,  so 
as  greatly  to  increase  tho  total  con- 
spicuousness  of  the  whole  binich. 
Whenever  tho  separate  blossoms  of  a 
plant  have  grown  so  small  as  to  b(v 
individually  little  attractive,  they  will 
clearly  gain  jin  advantage  by  cletail 
iiig  some  of  their  number  to  do  spe- 
cial duty  as  advertisements.  Hut  it 
seems  (lifllcult  at  first  sight  to  see  how 
natural  selection  can  bring  about  such 
a  result.  Mr.  Itecbert  Spencer  has 
pointed  out  the  way  out  of  this  difli- 
culty. 

If  you  look  at  a  (!Ow-parsnip,  yoii' 
will  see  that  the  crowded  central  flow- 
ers of  each  hea<l  aro  very  small,  witb 
cramped  ])etai.;,  because  they  have  n* 
room  to  expand  without  crushing  one 
another;  but  tho  freer  external  flow- 
ers are  much  larger,  with  broader 
])etals,  especially  on  the  outer  edge, 
because  they  have  plenty  of  room  in 
which  to  spread,  and  ])lenty  of  light 
and  air  on  which  to  feed.  Thus,  in 
all  crowded  trusses  of  blossom,  tho 
outer  flowers  tend  as  a  rule  to  grow 
la.'ger  and  more  showy  than  the  inner 
ones ;  and  if  this  natural  tendency 
happens  to  aid  the  plant  by  giving  it 
an  extra  chance  of  insect  fertilization,, 
it  will  bo  increased  and  specialized  hy 
constant  selection  of  those  individuals, 
which  best  display  it.  Our  gardeners, 
carry  the  process  one  step  further  f 
ft»r  they  artificially  select  such  gueld- 
er roses  as  have  the  largest  number 
of  barren  flowers  in  each  liead,  until 
at  last  they  produce  a  carefully  culti- 


24  [47r)| 


VIGNETTES  FliOM  NATURE. 


vated  monstrosity  with  all  the  flowers 
barren  and  broad-petal  led,  so  as  to 
form  a  great  white  fluffy  ball.  Such 
A  monstrous  variety  could  never  be 
|)evj)etuated  in  a  state  of  nature,  be- 
cause it  produces  no  seed :  it  ca;i  only 
be  proi)agated  by  slips  and  cuttings, 
lint  our  florists  are  fond  of  these  dis- 
torted forms,  their  only  ol)jo<!t  being 
lo  produce  a  mass  of  colored  surface, 
irrespective  of  use  to  the  plant.  So 
in  double  daisies  they  turn  the  inner 
fertile  flowers  into  barren  rays;  in 
the  dahlia  they  cultivate  out  the  cen- 
tral florets,  and  make  the  others  mere 
useless  tubular  blossoms;  and  in  roses 
ihey  degrade  the  stamens  into  sha})e- 
less  and  supernumerary  petals.  Such 
artificial  flowers  aie  never  beautifid 
to  a  botanical  eye,  because  they  lack 
symmetry  and  order.  Wlieu  once  you 
have  learnt  to  understand  and  admii'c 
the  simple  and  effective  'plan  upon 
which  all  flower  architectuie  is  based, 
these  distorted  and  monstrous  blos- 
soms have  no  more  atti-action  for 
your  eye  than  the  calf  with  five  legrt 
or  the  two-luaded  nightingale  has  for 
any  cultivated  taste. 

Here  is  another  curious  i)oint  about 
the  guelder  rose.  If  I  cut  oj)eu  one 
■  iof  the  very  young  flower-buds,  and 
look  at  it  carefully  with  my  powerful 
V;ittle  pocket  lens,  I  can  see  that  in 
this  early  stage  it  has  three  cells  in 
the  undeveloped  fruit,  whereas  the 
ripe  berry  has  only  one,  Avith  a  single 
seed.  Even  in  the  full-blown  flowers 
here  two  of  the  cells  have  atrophied, 
though  there  are  still  three  little  stig- 
mas Oi  8eiisitivG  surfaces  for  tre  pol- 
len, as  though  the  plant  did  not  know 
its  own  mind,  and  rather  expected  to 
hivve  three  seeds  in  each  berry,  in- 
stead of  one.  This  curious  indecision 
is  doubtless  due  to  a  certain  historical 
fact  in  the  ancestry  of  the  guelder 
rose.  Once  upon  a  time,  no  doubt, 
the  progenitors  of  the  guilder  rose 
had  small  dry  capsules  instead  of 
berries,  with  a  number  of  seeds  in 
<3ach  cell.  Such  a  plant  as  the  red 
<iampion  still  retains  this  habit;  and, 
therefore,  as  the  seeds  merely  fall  out 
.loose  upon  the  ground,  it  is  necessary 


to  produce  a  great  number  of  them, 
in  order  to  S3cure  a  fair  chance  that 
one  at  least  shall  fall  upon  a  fitting 
spot  for  its  germination.  But  in 
some  ]>lant3  the  seed-covering  grows 
soft  and  succulent,  beeoming  what  in 
ordinary  parlance  we  call  a  fruit  or 
berry.  Then  a  bird  swallows  the 
entire  vessel,  seed  and  all;  digests ' 
the  l)iilpy  covering,  and  rejects  the 
hard  seed  in  circumstances  admirably 
adapted  for  its  growth.  Plants  of 
this  soj-t,  therefore,  lay  themselves 
out  to  allure  the  dispersing  birds, 
and  accordingly  fill  their  fruits  witb 
sweet  juices  and  bright  coloring,  just 
as  they  render  their  flowers  attractive 
with  honey  and  surround  them  Avith 
brilliant  petals  to  allure  the  fertilizing 
insects.  Moreover,  they  need  not 
now  produce  much  more  than  one 
seed  in  each  fruit,  because  the  seeds 
have  so  much  a  better  chance  of 
growing  up  than  they  used  to  have. 
Hence  most  berries  contain  very  few 
seeds,  often  only  one,  and  in  many 
cases  the  inmierorj  cells  of  the  dry 
ancestral  capsule  get  aborted  in  an 
early  stage,  because  they  are  no 
longer  needed  by  the  juicy  modern 
fruit.  Almost  all  the  honeysuckle 
tribe  (to  which,  though  you  would 
hardly  think  it,  tlie  guelder  rose  be- 
longs) have  succulent  fruits;  and 
their  seeds  are  solitary,  or  at  least 
very  few  in  each  cell.  So  that  the 
three  cells  of  these  very  young  flow- 
ers keep  up  the  memory  of  a  time 
when  the  guelder  rose  liad  not  as  yet 
acquired  its  berry,  but  was  obliged  to 
produce  large  numbers  uf  small  dry 
seeds  in  a  three-celled  capsule. 

There  are  two  niore  small  matters 
connected  with  this  bush  which  one 
can  hardly  afford  to  overlook.  The 
first  is  that  while  the  flowers  are 
white,  the  berries  are  blackish-red, 
and  those  of  the  nearly  allied  way 
faring  tree  are  dark  purple.  Now, 
white  is  a  common  color  for  flowers, 
but  very  rare  in  fruits ;  while  black 
or  dark  blue  and  purple  are  cowinon 
colors  for  fruits,  but  very  rave  in 
flowers.  The  plant  is  obliged  to  use 
one  set  of  hues  to  attract  the  proper 


VIGNETTES  FROM  NATURE. 


['170]  25 


insects,  and  another  set  to  attract  tlie 
proper  birds  ;  for  we  now  Itnow  tliat 
each  i>pecie8  of  insect  and  of  bird  has 
a  very  decided  taste  of  its  own  in  the 
matter  of  chromatics.  The  second 
point  is  this :  the  leaves  of  the  guelder 
rose  have  a  number  of  small  swollen 
glands  all  along  the  stalk,  and  a  fringe 
of  ragged-looking  leaf -like  appendages 
where  they  join  the  brancli.  These 
are  very  marked  and  obviously  useful 
structures:  Avhat  is  their  meaning? 
That  I  do  not  know.  I  merely  men- 
tion them  because  their  object  seems 
at  present  insoluble.  One  might  say 
the  same  thing  about  a  lumdred  other 
points  in  every  plant  or  animal  one 
picks  up  in  a  country  stroll.  The 
descriptions  of  naturalists  are  apt  to 
make  one  suppose  that  we  know  all 
about  them.  In  reality,  only  a  few 
small  parts  of  their  mechanism  are 
yet  even  partially  understood.  The 
very  idea  of  explaining  the  origin  of 
organic  structure  genetically  is  still  a 
novel  one.  We  have  only  just  begun 
to  dig  at.  the  vast  mine  ;  and  all  we 
can  do  as  yet  is  to  unearth  a  solitary 
little  nugget  or  two  and  parade  them 
before  the  world.  The  labor  of  the 
old-fashioned  naturalists  has  collected 
an  enormous  mass  oi  facts  as  to  form 
and  structure  ;  but  as  to  use  and  func- 
tion wo  have  still  almost  all  the  work 
to  do. 


XI. 


THE  HERON'S  HAUNT. 

Most  of  the  fields  on  the  country 
side  are  now  laid  uj)  for  hay,  or  down 
in  tall  haulming  corn ;  and  so  I  am 
driven  from  my  accustomed  botaniz- 
ing grounds  on  the  open  and  com- 
pelled to  take  refuge  in  the  wiUl 
bosky  moorland  '  r,ck  of  Hole  Com- 
mon. Here,  on  lue  edge  of  the  copse, 
the  river  widens  to  a  considerable 
pool,  and  coming  ui)on  it  softly 
through  the  wood  from  behind — the 
boggy,  moss-covered  ground  masking 
and  muftting  my  footfall — I  have  sur- 
prised a  great,  graceful  ash-and-white 
heron,  standing  all  iniconscious  on  the 


shallow  bottom,  in  the  very  act  of 
angling  for  minnows.  The  heron  is 
a  somewhat  rare  bird  among  the 
more  cultivated  parts  of  England  ; 
but  just  hereabouts  we  get  a  sight  of 
oru^  not  infrequently,  for  they  still 
breed  in  a  few  tall  ash  trees  at  Chil- 
combe  ]*ark,  where  the  lords  of  the 
manor  in  mediajval  times  long  ]>re- 
served  a  regular  hei'onry  to  provide 
sport  for  their  hawking.  There  is  no 
English  bird,  not  even  the  swan,  so 
])erftctly  and  absolutely  graceful  as 
the  heron.  I  am  leaning  n<»w  breath- 
less and  noiseless  against  tlio  gate, 
taking  a  good  look  at  him,  as  he 
stands  half-knee  deep  on  the  oozy 
bottom,  with  his  long  neck  arched 
over  the  water,  and  his  keen,  purple 
eye  fixed  eagerly  upon  the  fish  below. 
Though  I  am  still  twenty  yards  from 
where  he  poises  lightly  on  his  stilted 
logs,  I  can  see  distinctly  his  long 
pendant  snow-white  breast  feathers, 
his  crest  of  Avaving  black  plumes, 
falling  loosely  backward  over  the  ash- 
grey  neck,  and  even  the  bright  red 
skin  of  his  bare  legs  just  below  the 
feathered  thighs.  I  dare  hai'dly  move 
nearer  to  get  a  closer  view  of  his 
beautiful  plumage ;  and  still  I  will 
try.  I  jjush  very  quietly  through  the 
gate,  but  not  quite  <piietly  enough  for 
the  heron.  One  moment  he  raises 
his  curved  neck  and  poises  his  head  a 
little  on  one  side  to  listen  for  the 
direction  of  the  rustling:  then  he 
catclios  a  glimpse  of  mo  as  I  try  to 
draw  back  silently  behind  a  clump  of 
flags  and  n(!ttles ;  and  in  a  moment 
his  long  legs  give  him  a  good  spring 
from  the  bottom,  his  big  wings  spread 
with  a  sudden  flap  skywards,  and  al- 
nuist  before  I  can  note  what  is  hap- 
pening he  is  oft'  and  away  to  leeward, 
makinsir  in  a  bee-line  for  the  hi<j:h 
trees  that  fringe  the  artificial  water 
in  Chilcombe  Hollow. 

All  thesewading  birds — the  herons, 
the  cranes,  the  bitterns,  the  snipes, 
and  the  plovers — are  almost  neces- 
sarily, by  the  very  nature  of  their 
typical  conformation,  beautiful  and 
graceful  in  form.  Their  tall,  slender 
legs,  which  they  require  for  wading, 


26  [477] 


VIGNETTES  FROM  NATURE. 


Mi 


1 


« 


their  comjiar.atively  light  and  wcll- 
poiscd  bodies,  their  long,  curved, 
quickly-diirting  necks  and  shai-p 
Deaks,  which  tlioy  need  in  order  to 
secure  their  rapid  swimming  prey — 
all  these  things  make  the  waders,  al- 
most ins])itoof  tJiemselves,  handsome 
and  shai»ely  birds.  Tlieir  feet,  it  is 
true,  are  genei'ally  rather  large  and 
sprawling,  with  long,  widespread 
toes,  so  as  to  distribute  their  weight 
on  the  snow-shoe  ])rinciple,  and  pre- 
vent them  from  sinking  in  the  deep 
soft  mud  on  which  they  tread  ;  but 
then  we  seldom  see  the  feet,  because 
the  birds,  when  we  catch  a  close  view 
of  them  at  a! I,  are  almost  always 
either  on  stilts  in  the  Avaler,  or  flying 
with  their  legs  tucked  behind  them, 
after  their  ]jretty  rudder  like  fashion. 
I  have  often  wondered  whether  it  is 
this  genei-al  beauty  of  form  in  the 
waders  which  has  turned  their  aes- 
thetic tastes,  a])parently,  into  such  a 
sculpturesque  line.  Certainly,  it  is 
very  noteworthy,  that  Avherever 
amo!ig  this  particular  order  of  birds 
we  get  clear  evidence  of  ornamental 
devices,  such  as  JMr.  Darwin  sets 
down  to  long-exerted  selective  i)ref- 
erences  in  the  choice  of  mates,  the 
ornaments  are  almost  always  those  of 
form  lather  than  those  of  color. 

Tlie  waders,  I  sometimes  fancy, 
only  care  for  beauty  of  shape,  not  for 
beauty  of  tint.  As  1  stood  looking 
at  the  heron  here  just  now,  the  same 
old  idea  seemed  to  force  itself  more 
clearly  than  ever  upon  my  mind.  The 
decorative  adjuncts — the  curving 
tufted  crest  on  the  head,  the  ])eiident 
silvery  gorget  on  the  neck,  the  long 
ornamental  (piills  of  the  i)inions — all 
look  exactly  as  if  they  Ave  re  deliber- 
ately intended  to  emphasize  and 
heighten  the  natural  gracefulness  of 
the  heron's  form.  May  it  not  be,  I 
ask  myself,  tiiat  tliese  birds,  seeing 
one  another's  staturescpie  shape  from 
generation  to  generation,  have  that 
shape  just  hereditarily  implanted 
upon  the  nervous  system  of  the  spe- 
cies, in  coimection  with  all  their 
ideas  of  mating  and  of  love,  just  as 
the  human  form  is  hereditarily  asso- 


ciated with  all  oui  deepest  emotions, 
so  that  Miranda  falling  in  love  at  first 
sight  with  Ferdinand  is  not  a  mere 
poetical  fiction,  but  the  true  illustra- 
tion of  a  psychological  fact?  And 
fis  on  eacli  of  our  minds  and  brains 
the  picture  of  the  beautiful  human 
figure  is,  as  it  were,  antecedently  en- 
graved, may  not  the  ancesti'al  type 
be  similarly  engraved  on  the  minds 
and  brains  of  tlie  wading  birds?  If 
so,  would  it  not  be  natural  to  conclude 
that  these  birds,  having  thus  a  very 
graceful  form  as  their  generic  stand- 
ard of  taste,  a  graceful  form  with 
little  richness  of  coloring,  would 
naturally  choose  as  the  loveliest 
among  their  mates,  not  tliose  which 
showed  any  tendency  to  more  bright- 
hued  ])lumage  (which  indeed  might 
be  fatal  to  their  safety,  by  betraying 
them  to  their  enemies,  the  falcons  and 
eagles),  but  those  which  most  fully 
embodied  and  carried  f -.vthest  the 
ideal  specific  gracefulness  of  the  wad- 
ing type?  In  some  such  way,  it  seems 
10  me,  the  herons,  and  cranes,  and 
storks,  and  marabous  may  have  ac- 
quired their  very  distinct  and  notice- 
able crests  or  lappets. 

Forestine  flower-feeders  and  fruit - 
eatex's,  especially  in  the  tro])ics,  are 
almost  always ))rightly  colored.  Their 
chromatic  taste  seems  to  get  qirick- 
ened  in  their  daily  search  for  food 
among  the  beautiful  blossoms  and 
brilliant  fruits  of  southern  woodlands. 
Thus  the  humming-birds,  the  sun- 
birds,  and  the  brush-Longued  lories, 
three  very  dissimilar  grou|)S  of  birds 
so  fur  as  descent  is  concerned,  all 
alike  feed  upon  the  honey  and  the  in- 
sects which  they  extract  from  the 
large  tubular  bells  of  trojiical  flowers; 
and  all  alike  are  noticeable  for  their 
intense  metallic  lustre  or  pure  tones 
of  color.  Again,  the  parrots,  the 
toucans,  the  birds  of  paradise,  and 
many  other  of  the  more  beautiful 
exotic  species,  are  fruit-eaters,  and 
reflect  their  inherited  tastes  in  their 
own  gaudy  plumage.  But  the  waders 
have  no  such  special  reasons  for  ac- 
quiring a  love  for  bright  hues.  Hence 
their  testhetic  feeling  seems  rather  to 


VIGNETTES  FROM  NATURE. 


[478J  27 


have  taken  a  turn  towards  the  further 
development  of  their  own  graceful 
forms  Even  the  plainest  Avading 
birds  have  a  certain  natural  elegance 
of  shape  wiiich  supplies  a  primitive 
basis  for  ivsthetic  selection  to  work 
ujton.  Mr.  ])arwin  has  shown  that 
birds  in  early  times  were  less  brightly 
colored  and  less  decorated  than  their 
modern  descendants.  He  might  also 
have  added  that  the  most  central  and 
least  specialized  modern  members  of 
each  great  group  are  similarly  want- 
ing in  ornamental  adjuncts.  They 
represent  the  earliest  surviving  forms 
of  those  into  which  the  original  type 
has  split  up  ;  they  have  departed  least 
from  the  primitive  organization  of 
the  class  to  which  they  belong.  Con- 
versely, the  most  highly  dcvelojted 
and  specialized  members  of  each 
group  are  those  among  which  we 
most  often  find  extremely  marked 
aesthetic  decoration.  The  dominant 
creatures  of  every  class  can  affoi'd  to 
pay  most  attention  to  beauty  ;  the  less 
advanced  and  more  skulking  kinds 
are  glad  enough  to  eke  out  a  jn-eca- 
rious  livelihood  for  themselves  as  best 
they  may,  and  so  run  rather  towards 
protective  coloring  and  unobtrusive 
forms  than  towards  conspicuous  orna- 
mentation. 

Among  the  wad(>rs  this  principle  is 
very  fully  exemplified.  The  most 
central  and  least  specially  developed 
of  the  group  are  its  smaller  members, 
such  as  the  plover,  the  woodcock,  the 
snipe,  and  thcRandj)ij)ors,  all  of  which 
are  only  half-developed  waders,  with- 
out the  full  characteristic  structure  or 
correlated  habits  of  the  class.  They 
live  by  the  side  of  small  streams ; 
they  roam  a  good  deal  on  land  in  the 
fields ;  and  they  have  only  moderately 
long  legs  and  necks.  Moreover,  they 
are  colored  i)rotectively  to  resemble 
the  dry  grass  or  sand  on  which  they 
hop  about,  and  so  to  deceive  the  eyes 
of  hawks.  Many  of  them  are  more 
or  less  noctiu'nal,  and  all  of  them  are 
timid,  skulking  birds.  They  seem  to 
be  half-way,  so  to  speak,  on  the  road 
from  the  central  imdifferentiated 
group  of  birds,   represented  by  the 


larks  and  sparrows,  to  the  thorough- 
going waders,  represented  by  the 
storks,  cranes,  and  herons.  Not  one 
of  them  has  a  single  patch  of  bright 
color,  a  single  ornamental  jjlume, 
crest,  or  lappet.  Close-fitting,  incon- 
spicuous plumage  is  their  common 
characteristic. 

On  the  other  hand,  those  waders 
which  have  taken  to  a  thoroughly 
wading  life  have  consequently  devel- 
oped by  natural  selection  longer  legs 
and  necks  and  more  8})ecially  adapted 
feet  and  beaks.  Some  of  them  are 
even  web-footed  and  others  boat- 
billed.  These  larger,  better  devel- 
oped and  more  dominant  birds  are 
generally  distinguished  by  ajsthetic 
decoration.  Wherever  a  chance  va- 
riation ran  in  the  direction  of  heiglit- 
ening  and  intensifying  the  natural 
grace  of  form  which  is  implied  in 
their  specialized  wading  adaptations, 
it  was  seized  upon  and  perpetuated 
by  selective  preference,  llardly  a 
single  dominant  wader  is  devoid  of 
i  some  marked  decorative  adjuncts, 
I  Avhich  set  off  and  interpret  the  native 
utilitarian  beauty  of  his  slender  fig- 
ure. In  many  cases,  as  in  that  of 
the  ruff  (whose  name  sufficiently  de- 
scribes his  ornamental  character), 
these  decorated  birds  are  polyga- 
mous— which  of  course  allows  of 
only  the  vuy  handsomest  males  in 
each  generation  securing  themselves 
a  harem.  The  decorative  crests  and 
]>lumes  are  always  fully  and  ostenta- 
tiously displayed  before  the  hens  dur- 
ing the  i)airing  season,  and  in  some 
cases  are  produced  at  that  time  alone, 
IJut  as  to  bright  color,  only  a  few 
outlying  southern  wadei's,  like  the 
ibis  and  the  flamingo,  living  among 
the  big  water-lilies  and  marsh-flow- 
ers of  African  valleys,  ever  have  a 
trace  of  it ;  and  even  these  few  cases 
cannot  compare  in  variety  or  rich- 
ness of  hue  with  the  typical  fruit- 
eaters  and  flower-feeders. 


f 
f 


XII. 
A  BED  OF  NETTLES. 

Keagiiing  my  hand  into  the  hedge- 


28  t47'.tj 


VIGNETTE8  FROM  NATURE. 


row  to  pick  a  long,  lithe,  blossoming 
H])ray  of  black  bryony — here  it  is, 
with  its  graceful  climbing  stem,  its 
glossy,  lieart-shai)ecl  leaves  and  its 
jjretty  greenish  lily  flowers — 1  liave 
stung  myself  rather  badly  against  the 
nettles  that  grow  rank  and  tall  from 
tlie  rich  mud  in  the  ditch  below. 
Nothing  soothes  a  nettle  sting  like 
pliilosophy  and  dock-leaf ;  so  T  shall 
rub  a  little  of  the  leaf  on  my  hand 
and  then  sit  awhile  on  the  Hole  Farm 
gate  here  to  philosophize  about  net- 
tles and  things  generally,  as  is  my 
humble  wont.  There  is  a  great  deal 
more  in  nettles,  I  believe,  than  most 
people  are  apt  to  imagine ;  indeed, 
the  nettle-philosophy  at  ])resent 
current  with  the  larger  part  of 
the  world  seems  to  me  lament- 
ably onesided.  As  a  rule,  the 
sting  is  the  only  point  in  the  whole 
organization  of  the  family  over  which 
we  ever  waste  a  single  thought.  That 
is  our  ordinary  human  naiTowness  ; 
in  each  plant  or  animal  we  interest 
ourselves  about  that  one  part  alone 
which  lias  special  reference  to  our 
own  relations  with  it,  for  good  or  for 
evil.  In  a  strawberry,  we  think  only 
of  the  fruit ;  in  a  hawthorn,  of  the 
flowers ;  in  a  deadly  nightshade,  of 
the  poisonous  berry ;  and  in  a  neitle, 
of  the  sting.  Now,  I  frankly  admit 
at  the  present  moment  that  the  nettle 
sting  has  an  obtrusive  and  iinneces- 
earily  ])ungent  way  of  forcing  itself 
upon  the  Iniman  attention  ;  but  it  does 
not  sum  up  the  whole  life-history  of 
the  plant  in  its  own  one  ])eculiarity 
for  all  that.  The  nettle  exists  for  its 
own  sake,  we  may  be  sure,  and  not 
merely  for  the  sake  of  occasionally 
inflicting  a  passing  smart  upon  the 
meddlesome  human  fingers. 

However,  the  sting  itself,  viewed 
philosophically,  is  not  without  decided 
interest  of  its  own.  It  is  one,  and 
perhaps  the  most  highly  developed, 
among  tlie  devices  by  which  plants 
guard  themselves  against  the  attacks 
of  animals.     Weeds  or  shrubs  with 

4'uicy,  tender  leaves  are  very  apt  to 
•e  eaten  down  by  rabbits,  cows,  don- 
keys   and  other  herbivores.     But  if 


I  any  individuals  among  such  species 
'■  ha|>pen  to  show  any  tendency  to  the 
!  development  of  any  unpleasant  habit, 
j  which  prevents  the  lierbivores  from 
I  eating  them,  then  those  particular  in- 
j  dlviduals    will  of    course  be   spjtred 
I  when  their  neighbors  are  eaten,  and 
I  will    establish  a  new    and   specially 
protected  variety  in  the  course  of  suc- 
i  cessive  generations.    It  does  not  mat- 
!  ter  what  the  peculiarity  may  be,  pru- 
vided  oidy  it  in  any  way   deters  ani- 
;  nials  from  eating  the  plant.     In  the 
]  arum,    a  violently    acrid  juice  is   se- 
I  creted  in  the  leaves,  so  as  to  burn  the 
I  mouth  of  the  aggressor.     In  che  dan- 
j  delion  and  wild  lettuces,  the  juice  is 
;  merely  bitter.     In  houndstongue  and 
!  catmint  it  has  a  nauseous  taste.  Then 
!  airain,  in  the  hawthorn  and  the  black- 
j  thorn,  some  of   the  shorter  branches 
i  have    developed    into     stout,     sharp 
sj)ities,  which  tear  the  skin  of  would-be 
assailants.    In  the  brambles,  the  hairs 
on    the    stem  have    thickened    into 
pointed    prickles,  Avhich   answer  the 
same  purpose  as  the   spines  of  their 
neighbors.     In  the  thistles,  the  gorse 
and  the  holly,  once  more  it  is,  the  an- 
gles of  the  leaves  themselves,  which 
have  grown  into  needle-like  points,  so 
as  to  deter   animals   from  bi'owsing 
u[)on  them.     liut  the  nettle  probably 
carries    the    srjiie  tendency    to   the 
furthest  i)0ssible  limit.     Not  content 
with  mere  defense,  it    is  to  some  ex- 
tent  actively  aggressi\e.     The  liairs 
which  clothe  it  have    become   filled 
with  a  poisonous,  irritating  juice,  and 
when  any  herbivore  thrusts  his  tender 
nose  into  the   midst  of  a  clump,  the 
sharj>  points   pierce  his  naked    skin, 
the  liquid  gets  into  his  veins    in  the 
very  neighborhood  of  the  most  sensi- 
tive nerves,  and  the  ]»oor  creature  re- 
ceives   at   once   a   life-long  warning 
against  attacking  nettles  in  future. 

The  way  in  which  so  curious  a  de- 
vice has  grown  up  is  not,  it  seems  to 
me,  very  difticult  to  guess.  Many 
plants  are  armed  with  small  sharp 
hairs,  which  act  as  a  i)rotcction  to 
them  against  tlie  incursions  of  anta 
and  other  destructive  insects.  These 
hairs  are  often  enough  more  or  less 


VIGNETTES  FROM  NATURE. 


[480J  '2l> 


glandular  in  structure,  and  therefore 
liable  to  contain  various  waste  pro- 
ducts of  the  plant.  Suppose  one  of 
these  waste  products  in  the  ancestors 
of  the  nettle  to  be  at  first  slightly 
pungent,  by  accident,  as  it  were,  then 
it  wouUl  exercise  a  slightly  deterrent 
eifect  upon  nettle-eating  animals. 
The  more  stinging  it  grew,  the  more 
effectual  would  the  protection  be ; 
and  as  in  each  generation  the  least 
protected  plants  would  get  eaten 
down,  while  the  more  protected  were 
spared,  the  tendency  would  be  for  the 
juice  to  grow  moi-e  and  more  stinging 
till  at  last  it  reached  the  ])resent  high 
point  of  development.  It  is  notice- 
able, too,  that  in  our  warrens  and  j 
wild  places,  most  of  the  plants  are  I 
thus  more  or  less  protected  in  one 
way  or  another  from  the  attacks  of 
animals.  These  neglected  sjjots  are 
overgrown  with  gorse,  brambles, 
nettles,  blackthorn,  and  mullein,  as 
well  as  with  the  bitter  spurges,  and 
the  stringy  inedible  bracken.  So,  too, 
while  in  our  meadows  we  purposely 
propagate  tender  fodder  plants,  like 
grasses  and  clovers,  we  iind  on  the 
margins  of  our  pastures  and  by  our 
roadsides  only  protected  species,  such 
as  thistles,  houndstongue,  cuckoo- 
pint,  charlock,  nettles  (once  more), 
and  thorn  bushes.  The  cattle  or  the 
rabbits  eat  down  at  once  all  juicy  and 
succulent  plants,  leaving  only  these 
nauseous  or  prickly  kinds,  together 
with  such  stringy  and  innutritions 
weeds  as  chervil,  plantain,  and  bur- 
dock. Here  we  see  the  mechanism 
of  natural  selection  at  work  under 
our  very  eyes. 

But  the  sting  certainly  does  not  ex- 
haust the  whole  philosophy  of  the 
nettle.  Ijook,  for  example,  at  the 
stem  and  leaves.  The  nettle  has 
found  its  chance  in  life,  its  one  fitting 
vacancy,  among  the  ditches  and 
waste-places  by  roadsides  or  near  cot- 
tages ;  and  it  has  laid  itself  out  for 
the  circumstances  m  which  it  lives. 
Its  near  relative,  the  hop,  is  a  twisting 
climber ;  it  southern  cousins,  the  fig 
and  the  mulberry,  are  tall  'ind  spread- 
ing trees.     Hut  the  nectle  has  made 


!  itself  a  niche  in  nature  along  the  bare 
i  patches  wliich  diversify  lunnan  culti- 
;  vation ;  an<l  it  has  adapted  its  stem 
,  and  leaves  to  the  station  in  life  where 
I  it  has  pleased  Providence  to  place  it. 
!  Plants  like  the  dock,  the  burdock,  and 
'  the    rhubarb,  which   lift  their  leaves 
\  straight  above  the  ground,  from  large 
j  subterraneati  revervoirs  of   material, 
i  have    usually    big,    broad,   undivided 
I  leaves,    that  overshadow  all  beneath 
them,    and  push  boldly  out  on  every 
side   to  drink  in  the  air  and  the  sun- 
light.    On    the   other   hand,    legular 
hedgerow  plants,  like  cleavers,  cher- 
vil,   herb  Robert,   milfoil,  and    most 
ferns,    which    grow   in    the    tangled 
shady    undern-ath  of  the  banks  ami 
thickets,  have  usually  slender,  blade- 
like, much-divided  leaves,  all  split  up 
into  little   long  narrow  pushing  seg- 
ments, because  they  cannot  get  sun- 
light and  air  enough   to  build  up  a 
single  large  respectable  rounded  leaf. 
The  nettle  is  just  half-way  between 
tnese  two  extremes.  It  does  not  grow 
out  broad  and  solitary  like  the  bur- 
dock,   nor  does   it  creep   under   the 
hedges   like   the   little   much-divided 
wayside  weeds  ;  but  it  spring  up  erect 
in  tall,  thick,  luxuriant  clumps,  grow- 
ing close  together,  each  stem  fringed 
with      a     considerable     number     of 
moderate-sized,  heart-shaped,  toothed 
and  pointed  leaves.    Such  leaves  have 
just  room  enough  to  expand  and  to 
extract   from   the   air  all  the  carbon 
they  need  for   their  growth,  without 
encroaching  upon  one  another's  food 
supply  (for   it  must  always  be  borne 
m  mind  that  leaves  grow  out  of  the 
air,  not,  as  most  people  fancy,  out  of 
the  ground),  and  so  without  the  conse- 
quent necessity  for  dividing  up  into 
little  separate  narrow  segments.     Ac- 
cordingly,  this  type  of  leaf   is  very 
common  among  all  those  plants  which 
spring    up  beside  the  hedgerows   in 
the  same  erect  shrubby  manner  as  the 
nettles.     It  is  almost  exactly  imitated 
in  the  dead-nettle  and  the  hemp-nettle, 
which  are  plants  of  a  totally  distinct 
family,  with  flowers  of  the  sage  and 
rosemary  type;  and  it  is  more  or  less 
simulated    by  ten   or  twenty  other 


30  [481] 


VIGNETTES  FROM  NATURE. 


species  of  like  habi'  This  peculiar- 
ity of  external  resemblance,  under 
identical  circumstances,  between  or- 
ganisms wholly  unlike  in  origin  and 
pedigree,  is  a  common  and  natural 
one.  Thus,  in  the  dry  deserts  of  In- 
dia, some  of  the  spurge  tribe  grow 
thick  and  .aicculent,  so  as  exactly  to 
resemble  the  genealogically  very  dif- 
ferent cactuses  of  like  dry  deserts  in 
America ;  and  a  gallinaceous  bird, 
stranded  on  the  shores  of  the  Ant- 
arctic Islands,  has  ac(juired  the  long 
k'gs  of  the  waders,  together  with  the 
characteristic  colors  of  the  gulls. 
Whatever  the  original  stock,  natural 
selection  tends  always  under  like  cir- 
cumstances to  produce  like  results. 

Then,  again,  there  is  the  flower  of 
the  nettle,  which  in  most  plants  is  so 
much  the  most  conspicuous  part  of 
all.     Yet  in  this  particular  plant  it  is 
so  unobtrusive  that  most  people  never 
notice  its  existence  in  any  way.  That 
is  because  the  nettle  is  wind-fertilized, 
and  so  does  not  need  bright  and  at- 
tractive petals.     Here  are  the  flower- 
ing branches,  a  lot   of   little   forked 
antler  like  spikes,  sticking  out  at  right 
angles  from  the  stem,  and  half  con- 
cealed by  the  leaves  of  the  row  above 
them.     Like  many  other  wind-fertil- 
i/.ed  flowers,  the  stamens  and  pistils 
are   collected   on  different  plants — a 
plan  which   absolutely  insin-es  cross- 
fertilization,  without  the  aid  of  the 
insects.     I  pick  one   of  the  stamen- 
bearing  clustei's,  and  can  see  that  it 
is  made  up  of  small  separate  green 
blossoms,  each  with  four  tiny   leaf- 
like petals,  and  with   four  stamens 
doubled  up  in   the  centre.     I  touch 
the  flowers  with  the  ti])  of  my  pocket- 
knife,  and  in  a  second  the  four  stamens 
jump  out  elastically  as  if  alive,  and 
dust   the   white   pollen  all   over  my 
fingers.     Why  should   they  act  like 
this  ?     Such  tricks  are  not  uncommon 
in  bee-fertilized  flowers,  because  they 
insiu'e  the   pollen   being  shed    only 
when  a  bee  thrusts  his  head  into  the 
blossom ;  but  what  use  can  this  device 
be  to   the  wind-fertilized  nettle?     I 
think  the  object    is  somewhat  after 
this  fashion.     If  the  pollen  were  shed 


during  perfectly  calm  weather  it 
would  simply  fall  upon  the  ground, 
without  reaching  the  pistils  of  neigh- 
boring plants  at  all.  But  by  having 
the  stamens  thus  .doubled  up,  with 
elastic  stalks,  it  Iiappens  that  even 
when  ripe  they  do  not  open  and  shed 
the  pollen  unless  upon  the  occurrence 
of  some  slight  concussion.  This  con- 
cussion is  given  when  the  stems  are 
waved  about  by  the  wind  ;  and  then 
the  pollen  is  shaken  out  under  cir- 
cumstances which  give  it  the  best 
chance  of  reaching  the  pistil. 

Finally,  there  is  the  question  of 
fruit.  In  the  fig  and  the  mulberry 
the  fruit  is  succulent,  and  depends  for 
its  dispersion  upon  birds  and  animals. 
In  the  nettle  it  takes  the  form  of  a 
tiny  seed-like  flattened  nut.  Why  is 
this,  again?  One  might  as  well  ask, 
why  are  we  not  all  Lord  CJhancellore 
or  Presidents  of  the  Royal  Academy. 
Each  plant  and  each  animal  makes 
the  best  of  such  talents  as  it  has  got, 
and  gets  on  by  their  aid  ;  but  all  have 
not  the  same  talents.  One  survives 
by  dint  of  its  prickles ;  another  by 
dint  of  its  attractive  flowers ;  a  third 
by  its  sweet  fruit;  a  fourth  by  its 
hard  nut-shell.  As  regards  stings, 
the  nettle  is  one  of  the  best  protected 
plants  ;  as  regards  flower  and  fruit,  it 
is  merely  one  of  the  ruck.  Every 
plant  can  only  take  advantage  of  any 
stray  chances  it  happens  to  possess ; 
and  the  same  advantageous  tenden- 
cies do  not  show  themselves  in  all 
alike.  It  is  said  that  once  a  certain 
American,  hearing  of  the  sums  which 
Canova  got  for  his  handicraft,  took 
his  son  to  the  great  man's  studio,  and 
inquired  how  much  he  would  ask  to 
make  the  boy  a  sculptor.  But  there 
is  no  evidence  to  show  that  that  aspir- 
ing youth  ever  produced  an  Aphordite 
or  a  Discobolus. 


XIII. 

LOOSESTRIFE  AND  PIM- 
PERNEL. 

I  HAVE  picked  this  long  delicate 
spray  of  woodland  loo.sestrife— a  pret- 
ty, graceful,  small  creeping  flower — 


VIGNETTES  FROM  NATURE. 


[482]  31 


in  the  deep  thickets  of  Netherden 
Spinney;  where  its  slender  trailing 
stems  grow  abundantly  under  the 
dam  J)  shade  of  the  young  alder  bushes. 
It  does  not  in  the  least  •  esemble  the 
big  erect  purple  loosestrife,  that  hand- 
some tall  water-side  plant,  whose 
great  bunches  of  brilliant  flowers 
hang  so  heavily  over  the  banks  of 
brooks  and  rivers  a  little  later  in  the 
season ;  for,  indeed,  the  two  species 
have  no  connection  with  one  another 
except  etymological ly,  and  derive 
their  common  name  from  different 
sources,  the  one  truly  English,  the 
other  as  a  mere  herbalist's  translation 
of  the  Greek  lysimaohia.  The  wood- 
land loosestrife  has  small  yellow  flow- 
ers, of  a  regular  and  simple  sort ;  and 
it  is  by  family  a  primrose,  though  it 
hardly  looks  much  like  one  to  a  casual 
observer.  I  have  picked  it  now,  how- 
ever, for  comparison  with  this  other 
allied  plant,  the  common  little  pini- 
j)ernel,  whose  pretty  bright  red  blos- 
soms are  familiar  friends  in  every 
cornfiekl  and  waste  patch  of  garden. 
The  two  j)lants  are  veiy  interesting 
in  their  way,  as  illustrating  a  curious 
feature  of  evolution  ;  and  tliey  are  in- 
teresting, too,  as  shownig  the  sort  of 
errors  into  which  people  were  con- 
stantlv  led  before  the  rise  of  evolu- 
tionism  by  the  old  artificial  way  of 
r<.'garding  the  relationships  between 
[dants  and  animals. 

In  all  the  books  about  botany,  even, 
I  believe,  to  the  present  day,  you  will 
Und  the  woodland  loosestrife  classed 
as  a  species  of  the  genus  Lysimachia, 
while  the  pimpernel  is  classed  as  a 
species  of  the  genus  Anagallis.  But 
in  reality,  looking  at  the  matter  from 
the  new  standpoint  of  descent  or  ac- 
tual pedigree,  there  can  ')e  very  little 
doubt  that  this  particulai-  loosestrife 
is  far  more  closely  related  to  the  pim- 
pernel, which  is  thus  [)laced  in  a  sep- 
arate gemis,  than  to  the  other  yellow 
loosestrifes  which  are  included  in  the 
same  genus  with  it.  The  reasons  that 
induced  the  older  botanists  to  make 
this  classification  are  clear  enough, 
and  they  seemed  at  the  time  pt  "fectly 
•cogent ;  nay,  they  have  not  yet  been 


discarded,  I  fancy,  by  any  of  our 
modern  reformers,  though  no  doubt 
they  will  be  so  as  soon  as  the  question 
is  once  fairly  considered  at  scientific 
headquarters.  The  loosestrife  genus 
was  defined  as  having  a  capsule  open- 
ing at  the  top  when  ripe  in  five  or  ten 
valves;  the  pimpernel  geinis  was  de- 
fined, on  the  contriuy,  as  having  a 
capsule  opening  in  the  middle,  by  a 
line  running  round  it  transversely  in- 
stead of  longitudinally.  If  we  con- 
sider the  capsule  as  represented  by  a 
common  terrestrial  globe,  joined  to 
the  stalk  at  the  south  pole,  then  in 
the  loosestrifes  this  capsule  ma/  be 
figured  as  dividing  into  several  seg- 
ments along  the  meridians  from  the 
north  pole  downwards ;  while  in  the 
pimpernels  it  may  be  figured  as  divid- 
i  ing  into  two  hemispheres  at  the  equa- 
tor. It  is  just  the  difference  between 
letting  an  orange  burst  open  along  the 
natural  partitions,  or  cutting  it  across 
the  middle  at  right  angles  to  the  par- 
titions. Now,  if  you  look  closely  at 
the  ripe  capsules  of  the  woodland 
loosestrife,  you  will  see  that  it  splits 
asunder  into  separate  valves ;  and, 
therefore,  according  to  this  rule,  it  is 
a  true  lysimachia ;  Avhile  if  you  look 
closely  at  the  ripe  cajtsules  of  the 
])impernel,  you  will  see  that  the  top 
lifts  ofl:  bodily  in  a  hemisphere  or  cup, 
displaying  the  seeds  within  as  an  un- 
covered sphere  ;  iuid  therefore,  on  the 
same  principle,  it  is  a  true  anagallis. 
80  far  as  this  reasoning  goes,  it  is 
perfectly  just  and  accurate. 

But  now,  again,  if  we  in(piire  into 
the  development  and  history  of  the 
two  plants,  we  shall  probably  come 
to  a  very  different  conclusion.  Most 
of  the  j)riim-ose  family,  to  which  both 
genera  belong,  have  capsules  opehing 
by  valves  ;  only  two  or  three  i)eculiar 
species,  like  the  common  pimjiernel, 
bog  pimpernel,  andthe  tiny  chaffweed, 
have  capsules  opening  by  a  lid  which 
lifts  off  in  a  single  piece.  Therefore 
the  presumption  is  that  the  latter 
forms  are  derived  from  the  former, 
and  not  vice  versa,  especially  as  the 
valvular  mode  of  opening  is  a  com- 
mon one  among  all  plants,  while  the 


33  nm\ 


VIGNETTES  FUOM  NATURE. 


transvorsi'  mode  is  oxlrt'iiu'ly  unusual. 
Hut  we  hiivc  soiuelhiug  more  than 
such  a  presumption  ;  we  have  an  ac 
tual  relic  of  tlie  earlier  habit  imifressed 
still  upon  the  very  structure  of  the 
pimpernel.  If  you  look  carefully  into 
its  hair-ri|)e  capsules  (with  a  sniall 
pocket  lens,  or  even  without  one)  you 
will  see  live  dark  brown  lines  travers- 
ing the  top  of  the  sphere,  from  the 
))()la  toward  the  equator,  exactly  like 
the  meridians  on  a  globe.  These  are 
the  marks  of  the  valves  by  which  the 
capsule  used  once  to  open.  In  the 
yellow  loosestrife  you  will  find  exact- 
ly similar  marks;  only  in  that  case 
tlicy  are  the  lines  along  which  the 
capsule  actually  splits  when  ripe; 
whereas  in  tlie  jumpernel  they  only 
simulate  such  a  purpose  beforehand, 
while  the  actual  mode  of  .)pening  is 
l>v  a  transverse  division.  There  can 
he  no  doubt  at  all,  tlierefore,  that  the 
pinii)ernel  is  really  directly  descended 
from  an  ancestor  which  closely  re- 
sembled the  woodland  loosestrife  ;  and 
that  the  present  peculiarity  in  its 
method  of  o])cning  is  quite  a  modern 
or  recently  accpiii-ed  habit.  Other- 
wise, it  would  not  still  retain  the  five 
v.'Uve-marks  on  the  half-ripe  capsule 
so  very  distinctly  as  it  still  does. 

Tn  every  other  respect  except  this 
one  point  the  woodland  loosestrife 
much  more  closely  resembles  the  pim- 
pernel than  it  resembles  the  other 
members  of  its  own  genus.  Both  are 
slender  trailing  })iants,  with  leaves  of 
much  the  same  character;  both  have 
small  flowers  of  the  same  general  type, 
on  long  thin  stalks,  which  roll  back 
as  the  capsule  ri])ens  ;  and  both  have 
a  certain  indefinite  likeness  to  one 
another  in  the  vague  ])oints  of  exter- 
nal appearance,  which  botanists  de- 
scribe as  "habit."  It  is  true,  the 
blossoms  of  the  woodland  loosestrife 
are  a  pale  delicate  yellow,  while  those 
of  the  pimpernel  are  bright  orange- 
red  :  but  that  is  a  small  matter,  mainly 
dependent  upon  their  insect  fertilizers 
and  their  dili'orent  distribution,  the 
one  plant  loving  shady  shady  copses 
or  moist  woods,  while  the  other  loves 
ojien  cornfields  and  dry  barren  places. 


In  general  shape,  however,  and  in  all 
important  characters,  the  blossom^ 
are  simply  identical. 

It  is  impossible,  therefore,  to  resist 
j  the  conclusion  tliat  the  pimpernel  is 
I  descended,  either  from  the  woodland 
j  loosestrife  itself,  or  from  some  com 
;  mon  paient  form  extremely  like  it. 
;  For  almost  all  the  distiiictivo  pecii- 
i  liarities  of  the  pimpernel,  except  only 
its  trick  of  opening  in  the  middle, 
must  liave  been  acquired  by  the  pa- 
rent form  before  it  began  to  split  up 
into  two  separate  species.  The  wood- 
land loosestrife,  remaining  in  damp 
ti'ee-covered  spots,  has  most  closely 
retained  the  general  appearance  of  the 
common  ancestor,  since  i«;s  flowers  are 
yellow,  like  those  of  the  other  loose- 
strifes, and  its  ca]»sule  still  opens  in 
longitudinal  valve.-^.  The  pimpernel, 
on  the  other  hand,  growing  in  those 
bare  patclies  which  hunuin  tillage 
renders  so  common,  has  become  a  fre- 
quent weed  of  cultivation  over  all 
Europe  and  half  Asia,  and  has  ac- 
companied man  in  his  various  migra- 
tions throughout  nearly  the  whole 
globe  For  some  reason  or  otlier — 
why,  it  is  hard  to  say — it  lias  found 
the  transverse  mode  of  opening  its 
capsule  suits  it  better  than  the  valvu- 
lar, })erliaps  because  this  plan  saved 
its  seeds  in  some  unknown  way  from 
some  dangerou'  animal  foe  ;  and  so  it 
has  universally  adopted  the  new  prin- 
ci])lc  in  jilace  of  the  old  one.  It  has 
also  changed  the  color  of  its  flowers, 
through  the  selective  action  of  the 
fresh  insect  fauna  to  which  it  was  ex- 
jiosed  under  the  altered  conditions  of 
its  life.  And,  finally,  it  (or  gome 
similar  form)  has  further  developetl 
the  bog  pimpernel  an<l  half  a  dozen 
other  more;  se))arate  species,  as  well 
as  the  still  further  differentiated  chaff- 
weeds,  which  de])art  progressively 
more  and  more  widely  from  the  com- 
mon loosestrife  pattern. 

The  fact  is,  fruits  and  seeds  are 
naturally  in  one  way  the  worst  of  all 
possible  guides  to  relationship  by 
descent;  because,  though  close  like- 
ness in  fruits  affords  a  fair  presump- 
tiou  of  close  kinship,  unlikeuess  in 


ii; 


VIGNETTES  FROM  NATURE. 


[4^11  83 


fruits  aflFords  no  valid  presumption 
aijainst  it.  Two  plants  may  remain 
ahke  in  their  leaves,  tlieir  stems,  their 
buds,  and  their  ilowers,  and  yet  when 
it  comes  to  their  fruit,  new  agencies 
may  be  brought  to  bear  upon  them 
which  for  the  iirst  lime  set  up  aslighi 
diiference  between  them.  This  differ- 
ence may  often  be  very  conspicuous, 
and  yet  may  b(*  of  extremely  little 
genealogic.'U  importance.  Thus  the 
almond  and  the  nectarine  are  really 
so  much  alike  in  all  general  points  of 
structure  that  one  may  say  they  are 
practically  the  very  self-same  plant; 
only  in  tiie  almond  the  fruit  has  a 
hardish  shell,  while  in  the  nectarine 
it  has  acquired  a  soft  one  through  the 
selective  action  of  birds.  Similarly, 
tliere  is  a  common  English  potentilla, 
which  exactly  resen)blesa  strawbei-ry 
in  everything  except  the  fruit,  and  that 
is  dry  instead  of  being  succulent. 
Hence  we  may  fairly  say  that  the 
strawberry  is  just  such  a  potentilla, 
whose  seed  reee[>tacle  has  become 
juicy  and  red,  through  having  been 
eaten  by  birds,  which  aided  in  dis- 
persing its  seeds.  The  old  botanists 
made  the  strawberry  into  a  separate 
genus  because  of  this  conspicuou.s 
(lirt'erence  ;  but  in  reality  tlie  differ- 
ence is  worth  very  little  as  an  indica- 
tion of  distinctness,  for  the  potentilla 
had  already  accpiired  every  distinctive 
trait  of  the  strawberry,  save  only 
this  one  noticeable  trait  of  a  succu- 
lent fruit-stem,  long  before  they 
diverged  from  one  another  ;  and  that 
one  peculiarity  might  be  and  actually 
was  easily  acquired  without  any 
change  in  the  general  habit  of  the 
species. 

In  all  these  cases  a  philosophical 
biologist  can  but  come  to  one  conclu 
sion.  Not  only  docs  the  strawberry 
not  differ  generically  from  the  ])0ten- 
tillas,  but  it  is  merely  a  slightly 
divergent  form  of  this  particular 
potentilla,  which  is  much  more  closely 
related  to  it  than  to  the  other  mem- 
bers of  the  artificial  genus.  And  so, 
too,  not  only  does  the  pimpernel  not 
differ  generically  from  the  woodland 
loosestrife,  but  it  is  merely  a  slightly 


divergent  form  of  that  i)articular 
loosestrife  which  is  much  more  closely 
related  to  it  than  to  the  other  niem- 
Ijers  of  the  genus  Lysimachia. 


XIV. 


TITK    i'.Wir   POND. 

TiiK  little  stretch  of  artificial  water 
in  Cliilcond)e  Hollow,  put  there  to 
form  an  element  in  the  view  from  the 
drawing-room  \vin<lows  of  the  manor- 
house,  positiv(!ly  teems  with  great, 
fat,  lazy  carp,  whose  broad  dark  backs 
I  can  just  distinguish  through  ihe 
l)ond  when  they  sail  across  slowly 
from  one  waving  bimch  of  weed  to 
another  in  their  heavy,  lumbering, 
overfed  way.  There  is  a  certain 
natural  congruity  bet  ,veen  the  carp 
and  the  pond — natural.  T  mean,  in  the 
sense  that  both  are  higiily  artificial, 
just  as  v.'e  might  say  that  a  shepherd- 
ess in  silk  skirts  with  a  pastoral  i^rook 
was  perfectly  natural  in  i\f<'f<vrluini- 
petre  oi  the  Watteau  order.  For  car}) 
are  the  most  absolutely  d<miesticated 
of  all  fishes,  except  their  near  rela- 
tions, the  goldfish ;  and  they  have 
conse(piently  undergone  the  usual 
amount  of  distortion  and  degradatioi! 
which  domestication  brings  in  its 
train.  Some  have  lost  their  scales 
altogether ;  some  have  grown  short 
and  stunq)y,  others  lean  and  low  : 
and  some  liave  got  their  fins  length- 
ened into  a  i»erfect  caricature  of  tlieir 
natural  selves.  Car[),  in  fact,  come 
to  us  'Vom  China,  where  they  have 
been  kejjt  in  artificial  ponds  from 
time  immemori.'d,  after  the  usual 
Chinese  fashion;  and  they  have  been 
carefully  bred  and  selected  for  their 
monstrosities  and  oddities,  which 
pleased  the  (.'elestial  taste,  exactly  as 
in  the  case  of  those  marvelous  varie- 
ties of  the  golden  carp,  with  expanded 
tails  and  stalked  eyes,  known  as  tele- 
scope fish,  that  one  sometimes  sees  in 
domestic  aquariums.  In  England,  it 
is  true,  the  carp  are  comparatively 
modern  denizens ;  for,  in  spite  of  the 
l)opular  notion  that  they  were  largely 
bred  in  mediajval  monasteries,  raoder;> 


84  [485] 


VIGNETTES  PROM  NATURE.. 


natiii'iilists  have  decided  that  they 
were  iirst  iutioduced  here  early  in  the 
seventeenth  century.  Yet  there  is 
still  a  certain  artificial  pond-bred  look 
about  them,  which  makes  them  har- 
monize well  with  these  daraned-up 
sheets  of  ornamental  water.  The 
swift  speckled  trout  suits  the  stickles 
nn<\  reaches  of  our  own  native  becks  ; 
but  tlie  lazy  carp  suits  the  slow  stag- 
nant pools  which  are  forced  upon  our 
unwilling  scenery  by  checking  the 
brooks  midway  on  their  course 
through  their  proper  sloping  English 
combes. 

Originally,  however,  the  habits  and 
manners  of  th((  carp  family  were  very 
different  from  those  which  this  par- 
ticular sj)ecies  has  acquired  in  the 
sluggish  streams,  broad  lakes,  and 
banked-up  ponds  of  the  Chinese  low- 
lands. Dr  (iiiiither,  our  greatest 
living  authority  on  the  study  of  fishes, 
lias  traced  the  migration  and  differen- 
tiation of  the  family  from  its  earliest 
form  in  its  ])rimitive  home  to  its  nu- 
merous divergent  branches  over  the 
whole  northern  hemisphere ;  and  his 
account  is  one  of  the  most  instructive 
studies  in  the  geographical  distrilju- 
tion  of  animals  that  has  yet  been 
attempted.  At  the  present  day  these 
cyprinoids  form  one-third  of  all  the 
fresh-water  species  of  fish  known  to 
science.  Yet  they  seem  to  be  a  com- 
paratively modern  family,  not  being 
found  in  eai'lier  geological  deposits 
than  those  of  the  tertiary  age.  Ap- 
parently, the  i)rimitive  ancestral  carp 
was  evolved  from  some  earlier  species 
in  the  great  Himalayan  range  which 
divides  the  tem])erate  and  tropical 
parts  of  Asia.  This  was  a  splendid 
starting-place  for  a  new  family,  since 
the  rivers  which  take  their  rise  in  the 
Central  Asian  backbone  ridge  flow  in 
every  direction  towards  the  Arctic, 
the  Pacific,  and  the  Indian  Ocean,  as 
well  as  towards  the  Aral  Sea,  which 
once  communicated  with  the  Caspian, 
and  so  gave  access  to  the  rivers  of 
Russia.  The  primitive  cyprinoids 
accordingly  set  out  on  their  travels 
towards  the  plains  on  every  side ;  and 
ns    they    went    they  accommodated 


themselves  step  by  step  to  the  most 
varying  tropical  or  sub-Arctic  condi- 
tions. Those  which  descended  the 
rivers  into  India  became  the  ancestors 
of  the  beautiful  carp-like  fishes  of  the 
Ganges  and  the  Indus.  Those  which 
slowly  made  their  way  into  China 
gave  birth  to  the  domestic  carp,  the 
goldfish,  and  many  other  8i)ecie8. 
And  those  which  still  more  slowly 
spread  into  the  outlying  peninsular 
tract  of  Europe  differentiated  them- 
selves into  our  familiar  barbels, 
gudgeons,  tench,  chubs,  dace,  roach, 
and  minnows. 

From  Europe  the  carp  kind  made 
their  way  into  the  New  World.  As 
early  as  the  pre-glaci.'il  epoch,  fossil 
forms  show  us  that  the  cyprinoids  had 
already  migrated  into  America,  no 
doubt  across  the  fresh  waters  in  the 
belt  of  land  Avhich  once  lay  upon  the 
high  submarine  bank  between  Scot- 
land, Iceland,  and  Greenland;  and 
the  descendants  of  these  primitive 
immigrants  now  form  the  suckers, 
white  mullets,  shiners,  whitetish,  and 
red-tins  of  the  Canadian  lakes  and 
rivers.  Thus  the  cyprinoids  have 
spread  over  the  whole  of  the  old  Con- 
tinent and  of  North  Amei'ica.  But 
the  sea  forms  the  great  barrier  in  the 
way  of  migration  for  fresh-water 
creatures  ;  so  that  they  have  not  yet 
been  able  to  get  beyond  the  limits  of 
this  northern  land-service,  long  united 
in  a  single  continent  by  the  elevation 
of  the  Icelandic  bank.  Australia  ,we 
know,  has  never  been  joined  to  Asia 
or  the  rest  of  the  world  since  the  cre- 
taceous period  at  least,  and  therefore 
there  are  no  cyprinoids  in  Australia. 
South  America  has  only  recently  been 
linked  to  the  northern  continent  by  the 
elevation  of  the  narrow  mountain  belt 
at  Panama  which  causes  so  much 
trouble  to  M.  de  Lesseps,  and  it  still 
preserves  for  the  most  part  its  own 
very  antiquated  and  isolated  fauna  of 
llamas,  alpacas,  armadillos,  sloths, 
and  ant-eaters;  so  that  into  South 
America,  too,  the  cyprinoids  have  not 
yet  had  time  to  penetrate.  Of  course 
they  are  equally  absent  from  the 
islands  of  the  Pacific,  cut  off  as  those 


11^  ; 


VIGNETTES  FROM  NATURE. 


[im\  35 


ooeanio  arohipelagos  are  from  all  the 
rest  of  the  world  by  a  broad  and 
practically  impassable  stretch  of  deep 
sea.  If  one  might  hazard  a  j^uess  a?. 
to  the  future,  apart  from  the  iiiterfer-  j 
ence  of  man,  it  is  most  likely  that  the ; 
carps  will  first  pass  down  the  Isthmus 
of  Panama  into  the  rivers  of  the 
Andes,  and  thence,  as  the  mountain 
specieu  gradually  accustom  themselves 
to  lowland  tropical  conditions,  into 
the  Amazon  valley;  that  their  inva- 
sion of  Australia  must  bo  deferred 
till  some  slow  secular  elevation  has 
done  awjiy  with  Torres  Straits  and 
the  Java  Sea  ;  and  that  in  all  human 
probability  they  will  never  naturally 
get  over  the  obstacles  which  seem  to 
shut  them  out  forever  from  the  archi- 
pelagos of  the  Pacific. 

In  their  origin  the  cyprinoids  were 
thus  Alpine  fishes  of  the  torrents,  not 
lazy  lurkers  on  the  muddy  bottoms  of 
inland  ponds.  It  is  only  the  accident 
of  their  long  residence  among  the 
great  alluvial  levels  of  the  Cliinese 
basins  which  has  given  our  own  do- 
mesticated carp  their  distinctive  spe- 
cific features.  Most  of  the  cyi)rinoidH 
are  still  lovers  of  rutniing  water,  and 
many  species  stil'  haunt  the  uj)land 
torrents  of  their  native  Central  Asian 
home.  Another  family,  the  siluroids, 
is  by  descent  the  really  typical  group 
of  muddy  water  fishes.  In  England, 
we  have  no  siluroids— our  streams  are 
too  pure  and  clear  and  rapid  for  them — 
but  in  Germany  the  slow  rivers  of  the 
eastern  plains  support  the  big  wels, 
and  in  America  the  cat-fishes  are 
found  abundantly  in  all  swamps  and 
shallow  waters  of  the  great  central 
level.  Dr.  Giinther  has  traced  the 
migrations  of  this  important  group, 
as  well  as  those  of  the  carps — they 
form  now  about  one-fourth  of  all 
known  fresh-water  species — and  has 
shown  pretty  certainly  whence  they 
came  and  how  far  they  have  gone. 
The  siluroids  are  essentially  fishes  of 
the  sluggish  waters  in  the  plains,  and 
they  seem  to  have  had  their  origin  in 
tropical  countries,  where  they  still 
flourish  best.  They  have  no  scales, 
but  are  clad  in  a  slippery  skin  ;  and 


they  have  always  long  barbels,  which 
apparently  fit  them  for  a  marshy  or 
muddy  life.  Probably  they  were  de- 
veloped at  a  later  date  than  the  carps ; 
for,  while  we  find  fossil  cyprinoids 
abundantly  in  the  tertiary  fresh-water 
limestones  of  (Jeningen  and  Stein- 
heim,  in  the  lignites  of  Bonn  and 
Bilin,  in  the  slates  and  shales  of  Sicily 
and  Sumatra,  and  even  in  the  Idaho 
deposits  of  North  America,  we  find 
no  fossil  siluroids  in  the  European 
tertiaries  at  all,  nor  anywhere  nearer 
than  the  fresh-water  strata  of  the 
Malay  Archipelago.  Hence  we  may 
fairly  conclude  that  at  a  period  when 
the  carps  were  already  widely  spread 
over  the  whole  northern  hemisphere, 
the  cat-fish  were  still  mainly  confined 
to  the  neighborhood  of  their  original 
tropical  home. 

Nevertheless,  the  primitive  siluroid 
had  some  striking  advantages  on  his 
side,  which  have  enabled  his  descend- 
ants to  outstrip  the  carp,  considering 
their  juniority  in  time,  in  the  race  for 
the  occupation  of  the  fresh  waters  of 
the  world.  Not  only  does  tiieir 
skeleton  show  certain  very  special 
modifications  adapted  to  their  peculiar 
mode  of  life,  but  they  are  also  com- 
paratively cosmopolitan  in  their  tastes, 
being  able  to  enter  the  sea,  to  which 
some  species  have  taken  permanently, 
though  still  keeping  for  the  most  part 
to  shallow  muddy  bottoms.  As  they 
are  thus  but  little  deterred  by  inter- 
vening oceans,  they  were  enabled  to 
spread  rapidly  over  the  whole  of  the 
tropics,  reaching  Northern  Australia 
from  India,  and  even  crossing  from 
South  America  to  the  Sandwich 
Islands.  As  yet,  however,  they  have 
not  made  their  way  into  the  coral 
islands  of  the  Pacific.  Northward 
they  spread  far  more  slowly,  as  they 
are  no  lovers  of  cold  water.  Only 
one  species  has  penetrated  into  Eu 
rope,  and  but  few  into  temperate 
Asia.  The  North  American  kinds, 
though  more  numerous,  belong  all  to 
a  single  group.  Towards  the  south 
temperate  regions,  where  the  land 
tapers  slowly  southward,  they  spread 
slowest  of  all ;  so  that  the  family  is 


H\  [487] 


VrONKT'I'Krt  FUOM  NATL'KK. 


h 


i! 


enfin-fv  « iiiitiiijj  in  Tiisuiiiniii,  Now 
ZcHiiiixl,  :iMtt  I'l'itH^oiiia.  Fuels  of 
distrilmtiori  like  tlicsc  were  iilturly 
Iiiraniii^'lt'ss  bcftiic  \v(>  olittiiiuMi  tlic 
kity  of  (VoliitioiiiNin  :  hut  with  that, 
kt'v  In  (ipon  tht'ir  iiicaiiinj^  thoy  hu- 
conm  at  oiicii  Hpoakiiij^  evidence  as  t(. 
th«  I'ornu'r  inVLfnvtion  uimI  relative 
dt'seeiif  of  the  whole  f^rouj)  of  crca 
turcs  to  which  they  refer. 


XV. 
A   VVJCLSII    |{()AJ)SII)K 

lit  1(1"  I)  Peiisani  the  walk  hci^'ins 
to  vHiw  tame  and  somewhat  tedious. 
Vi.ilf  way  to  Dylfryti.  it  is  tiMn  .  the 
lonj^,  low  laiiLCe  of  the  Llawlleeli  hill:' 
is  cleft  by  the  liitle  torrent  valley  of 
the  Artro ;  and  just  there  the  view 
opens  up  behind  into  the  beautiful 
glen  of  Cwni  Byehan,  backed  by  the 
piand,  bald  suiuniits  of  the  two 
iJhinogs  'vnd  their  sister  hills;  but 
beyond  this  one  glimpse  of  tlie  wild 
mountain  country  in  tlic  rear,  the 
highway  becomes  decidedly  dull  and 
monotonous.  On  one  side  stretches 
the  lowland,  j)rotected  from  the  sea 
by  }i  succession  of  blown  sand  (Umes, 
whicli  iilmost  liide  the  hori/on  with 
tlieir  line  of  stunted  mounds ;  on  the 
other  bitle  rises  the  dreary,  unbroken 
range  of  Llawllech,  a  mere  treeless 
elope  of  scanty  barley  and  stony  jtas- 
ture  hind.  To  right  and  left,  the  lane 
itself — for  it  hardly  deserves  to  be 
called  a  road — is  bounded  by  ston(! 
walls,  which  often  shut  out  what  little 
view  might  otherwise  be  obtained 
over  flat  shore,  distant  sea,  or  barren 
hillside ;  so  that  altogether,  for  the 
mere  lover  of  the  picturesque,  the  six 
miles"  walk  hence  to  Barmouth  forms 
a  very  uninteresting  termination  to  a 
pleasant  and  diversified  day's  tramp. 

To  the  geological  eye,  however, 
even  the  dullest  scenery  often  ))resents 
objects  of  special  interest  which  would 
never  strike  the  casual  unscientific 
observer.  Railway  cuttings,  M'hich 
appear  to  most  people  mere  blank  in- 
terruptions of  the  general  prospect, 
assume  for  the  enthusiastic  geologist 
the  guise  of  delightful  sections  made 


on  purpoH»  to  display  to  him  tin; 
nature  and  succession  of  tlie  strata, 
.lust  so  this  somewhat  weary  bit  of 
walled-in  Welsh  lane  is  frauglit  with 
much  interest  of  its  own  for  those 
who  choose  to  look  at  it  aright.  For 
the  boundary  walls  are  budt  not  of 
s(juare  (juarried  stone,  but  of  round 
and  shapeless  boid«lers,  often  thickly 
dappled  with  patches  of  grey  or  or- 
ang«'  lichen,  and  loosely  pded  to- 
gether, in  rough  primitive  fashion, 
without  «'einent  or  mortar.  If  one 
exandnes  them  closely  they  jtrove  also 
to  be  scratched  and  grooved  with 
parallel  lines;  and  these  lines  the 
geologist  at  once*  recognizes  as  du(!  to 
the  grinding  actiitn  of  the  glaciers. 
Tlut  boidders,  in  fact,  were  transported 
hitiiiT  l»y  the  great  ice  sheet  which 
once  covercil  the  whole  country  side 
hereabouts,  and  which  ran  out  far 
into  the  bed  of  wdiat  is  now  the  Irish 
Se:i 

Indeed,  the  entire  side  of  Llawllech 
consists  for  the  most  jtartof  one  huge 
moraine,  a  mere  mass  of  glacial  de- 
bris, nuiinly  made  up  of  fine  mini, 
with  i('e-worn  boulders  and  pel)l>les 
disposed  loosely  through  its  midst, 
like  raisins  and  currants  in  a  school 
plum-piidding.  That  is  what  makes 
this  low  range  so  monotonous  and 
uniform  in  surface ;  it  disj)lays  no 
jagged  and  weathered  craggy  rocks, 
no  dee])  glens  cut  by  ice  or  rivers, 
but  it  still  shows  for  the  most  part 
oidy  the  long,  rounded,  slci>ing  con- 
tour of  the  original  i  .oraine,  slightly 
cut  through  in  places  i)y  uninteresting 
streams.  In  the  railway  cuttings  be- 
low one  can  admirably  seti  the  com- 
position of  the  moraine,  with  its 
ground-tone  of  mud  and  its  inter- 
spersed boulders  ;  while  here  by  the 
roadside  one  finds  just  the  self-same 
boulders,  i)icked  off  the  ground  for 
the  sake  of  a  clearance,  and  piled  up 
loosely  to  make  a  rude  stone  wall. 
In  the  Snowdon  district,  especially 
along  the  ]M'etty  drive  through  Nant 
Gwynant  from  Beddgelert  to  Capel 
Curig,  numbers  of  sections  have  been 
made  in  th(!  moraines  for  road  metal, 
the  hard  boulders  being  dug  out  and 


VKiNLTTES  I'Uo.M  NATLUE. 


(IMS I  :»7 


brokt'ii  up  fur  this  iitililuriuii  ])iir|)*>H<>; 
aiitl  on  fill!  >il<»|i»'rt  tibove,  m-iir  ihe 
inoiintiiiii  tarn  ot'  lilyn  Ll}<liiw,  one 
may  Htill  <)l)H('rv(*  the  Inim'  hossc*!  •' ir- 
f;H!t's  of  the  native  roi-k  worn  by  .iii' 
^laricrs  wliieli  lieapcd  up  these  re 
fuse-pi  lew — r()i'heHHKnif,niinee»,HHt\wy 
I'.nW  tliein  in  tSwit/.erhiud — p»'rfc«'t 
ilonies  of  l)aro  stone,  even  now  sharp- 
ly grooved  and  marked  with  the  striii' 
seratehed  u|»on  them  by  the  super- 
ineunibent  ice  stream. 

It  is  impossibU;  to  avoid  noticing 
tliat  the  walls  are  very  nmeh  thicker 
than  they  need  be  for  practical  pur- 
pose ;  indeed,  in  some  places  they 
are  as  much  as  four  or  five  feet  broad. 
The  truth  is,  such  walls  are  rather  a 
simple  way  of  j^ettint;  rid  of  the 
boulders  than  a  jtroteclive  margin  to 
the  fields.  In  trying  to  cultivate 
those  glacial  slopes,  the  first  thing  to 
«lo  is  to  weed  out  the  surface  boulders  ; 
and  the  easiest  plan  of  doing  so  is  to 
j)ile  them  up  all  around  the  stubbed 
portidik  of  the  field.  The  thickness 
of  the  wall  depends  upon  the  number 
of  the  bouldeis.  ^Vhere  they  are 
many  the  field  is  small  and  the  wall 
big  ;  where  they  ai"e  few  the  field  is 
larger  and  the  wall  not  quite  so 
clumsy-looking.  In  some  places,  how- 
ever, even  the  wall  «loes  not  suffice  to 
use  up  all  the  loose  fragments ;  and 
then  they  are  often  jiacked  in  the 
corners  so  as  to  cant  the  angles  with 
n  small  fiat-topped  triangular  ])lat 
form.  Of  coiu'se  the  very  stoniest 
bits  are  wholly  uninclosed,  or  givc^n 
over  to  mountain  sheep,  who  fiiul  a 
scanty  pasture  in  the  chinks  between 
the  boulders ;  and  the  valleys  of  the 
little  rivulets  are  almost  always  mere 
gorges  of  naked  round  stones,  be- 
cause here  the  water  has  washed 
awi.y  all  the  soft  earth  between  them. 
(Such  denudation  is  always  going  on 
more  slowly,  even  in  the  other  parts  ; 
and  the  plain  or  marshland  which  lies 
between  the  foot  of  the  hills  and  the 
sea  has  been  built  up  by  the  detritus 
thus  carried  down  from  the  moraines, 
and  pi'otected  from  incursion  by  the 
hillocks  of  blown  sand. 

It  is  interesting,  liowever,  to  think 


j  that  every  one  of  these  big  voimd 
stoiu'M  has  been  oncc!  like  oursi-lvtw  a 
tourist,  and  has  traveled  on  the  side 
or  bottom  of  a  glacier  to  its  present 
pla(;e,  and  that,  too,  at  a  date  long 
subse(|uent  to  the  undoiiltted  arrival 
of  man  upon  the  earth.  It  was  many 
ages  after  the  low-browed  black  fel- 
lows hunted  the  rhinoceros  and  the 
mammoth  in  th(>  sw.-imps  of  (in-iy's 
Inn  and  the  jungles  of  Fleet  street, 
that  the  ice-slieet  bort;  these  bouhlers 
down  the  sides  of  Iilawlle(!h  to  this 
big  moraine.  Some  of  the  smaller 
pebbles  nniy  even  on(!e  have  been 
shapely  stone  hatchets  of  jiala-olithio 
man,  long  since  ground  down  into 
indistinguishable  iouM<lness  Ijy  the 
enormous  friction  of  the  moving 
glacier.  In  most  eases,  one  can  go 
so  far  as  to  decide  actually  where  the 
boulders  come  from  by  the  nature  of 
the  rock  from  which  they  iirederived  : 
this  bit  must  have  been  broken  off 
the  side  of  Aran,  that  bit  must  have 
been  detached  from  the  summit  of 
Kliinog,  and  this  other  again  must 
liave  traveled  all  the  way  from  the 
slopes  of  the  lierwyns.  liut,  if  any 
of  them  ever  bore  any  trace  of  human 
workmanship,  all  semblance  of  manu- 
factured articles  has  long  been  worn 
away  from  their  surface  by  the  grind- 
ing ice-mill.  It  is  only  in  the  pro- 
tected fioors  of  flooded  caves  or  among 
the  subsisting  drift  of  glacial  and 
interglacial  rivers  that  we  can  now 
find  any  traces  of  man's  early  handi- 
craft. Everywhere  else  the  ice-sheet 
has  planed  everything  bodily  off  the 
face  of  the  land:  that  is  why  we  find 
few  or  no  i>alieolithic  skeletons.  And 
we  must  never  forget,  in  estimating  the 
past  history  or  ]jresent  fainia  and 
flora  of  England,  that  this  total 
blank  in  our  geological  and  arclneo- 
lojjical  annals  cuts  in  like  a  complete 
interru]>tion  between  the  two  known 
ages  of  human  life  in  this  island. 
Everything  that  e.xisted  in  Britain 
l)efore  the  last  gi-eat  ice-age  was 
cleaned  utterly  off  the  face  of  the 
country  by  the  vast  system  of  glaciers 
which  then  grew  up  ;  everything  that 
now  exists  in  it  has  come  into  the 


38  [489] 


VIGNETTES  FROM  NATURE. 


K 


land  since  the  date  of  that  gradual 
but  all-embracing  cataclysm.  The 
men,  the  animals,  the  plants  which 
lived  here  before  the  ice  covered  the 
country  belonged  to  extinct  types,  or 
to  species  now  confined  to  southern 
climates ;  when  the  ice  cleared  away 
it  had  swept  off  almost  every  relic  of 
their  existence,  and  a  new  race,  a  new 
fauna,  and  a  new  flora  came  to  occupy 
the  virgin  soil. 


XVI. 


SEASIDE  WEEDS. 

Behind  the  bar  which  closes  the 
wide  throat  of  the  estuary  here  at 
Stourmouth  a  long  expanse  of  sand 
stretches  away  inland  almost  as  far 
as  the  weirhead  that  marks  the  high- 
est point  of  tidal  action  in  the  little 
river.  Some  of  this  sand  lies  below 
the  level  of  high  water,  and  is  there- 
fore very  soft  and  smooth  and  muddy; 
bixt  a  large  portion  -f  it  stands  al- 
ways high  and  dry,  blown  about  into 
uneven  ridges  and  hollows  by  the 
strong  winds  that  rush  down  the 
opening  between  the  two  parallel 
ranges  of  neighboring  hills.  As  I 
sit  upon  one  of  these  ridges  watching 
the  slow  clouds  drifting  landward  be- 
fore the  westerly  breeze,  I  have 
picked  from  between  the  sand  a  little 
creeping  weed,  root  and  all,  with 
thick,  fleshy,  cylindrical  leaves,  and 
a  stout  thorn  at  the  end  of  each.  It 
is  a  common  seaside  plant — saltwort 
or  kali;  and,  like  sand-loving  plants 
generally,  it  has  very  succulent  and 
iuicy  foliage.  The  reason  for  this 
ieshy  habit  under  such  ci.  umstances 
seems  clear  enough.  Marshy  plants, 
or  plants  which  live  in  ordinary 
moist  soils,  can  get  plenty  of  water 
whenever  they  want  it,  and  so  they 
need  not  store  away  a  .y  against 
emergencies  in  case  of  droughts. 
Even  dry  hillaide  shrubs,  like  the 
rosemaries  and  heaths,  can  thrust 
their  roots  deep  into  thi  j  earth,  and  so 
manage  always  to  get  a  little  supply 
of  moisture,  su<»  jient  to  keep  their 
hard,   crisp  foliage  alive,  and  their 


sap  slowly  circulating,  even  in  the 
driest  Summer  weather;  but  weeds 
which  live  on  sand  must  economize 
water  whenever  they  can  get  it.  Tlie 
rain  that  falls  upon  the  spots  where 
they  grow  sinks  rapidly  through  the 
surface,  and  in  a  few  hours  the  whole 
place  is  just  as  dry  ts  it  was  before 
the  shower.  Accordingly  those  plants 
which  have  accommodated  themselves 
to  such  situations  have  necessarily 
acquired  vei-y  thick  and  fleshy  leaves ; 
and  this  acquisition  was  the  easier  to 
make,  because  proximity  to  the  sea 
produces  in  all  plants  a  slight  succu- 
lent tendency.  As  soon  as  rain  falls 
they  drink  up  all  the  water  that 
comes  in  the  way  of  their  spreading 
rootlets,  and  then  they  store  it  away 
in  their  broad  leaves  or  thick  stems 
till  they  require  it  for  use.  Just  as 
the  camel  takes  one  long  drink  before 
starting,  which  supplies  his  wants  for 
some  days  in  the  desert,  so  the  salt- 
wort takes  one  long  drink  at  each 
shower  and  subsists  upon  that  till  the 
next  rainfall. 

The  history  of  this  seaside  weed 
can  be  easily  traced  by  means  of  its 
own  existing  structure.  By  origin  it 
is  one  of  the  goosefoots,  a  family  of 
small,  weedy-looking  plants,  which 
glow  abundantly  in  all  wasts  places 
and  over  heaps  of  rubbish  near  culti- 
vated ground. 

The  flower  of  the  kali,  indeed,  is 
still  essentially  a  goosefoot  flower — a 
mere  inconspicuous  little  green  blos- 
som, hidden  in  the  angle  between  the 
stem  and  the  leaves,  after  the  fashion 
of  many  plants  which  have  not  learnt 
how  to  develop  bright  petals  for  the 
attraction  of  insects.  But  the  goose- 
foots,  in  the  course  of  their  si)read 
over  the  earth,  would  often  shed  their 
seeds  upon  sandy  ])laces ;  and  being 
as  a  rule  originally  rather  disposed  to 
fleshiness,  especially  in  the  stems, 
they  must  often  have  managed  to 
live  on  even  in  these  unfavorable 
situations  where  most  other  plants 
would  starve  or  wither  outright.  Of 
course  only  the  very  fleshiest  speci- 
mens would  survive  to  blossom  and 
set  their  seed ;  and  these  seeds,  again, 


VIGNETTES  PROM  NATURE. 


[4001  89 


the 
eedfi 
mize 

Tho 
'^here 
1  the 
i'hole 
L'fore 
ants 

Ives 
arily 
ves; 
to 


would  produce  young  plants,  most  of 
which  would  be  just  as  succulent  as 
their  parents,  while  a  few  would 
doubtless  surpass  them  in  this  respect. 
As  such  natural  weeding  out  of  the 
least  adapted  forms  would  occur  with 
every  drought,  and  as  the  best  adapted 
which  lived  through  the  droughts  by 
virtue  of  their  superior  fleshiness 
would  occasionally  cross  with  one 
another,  either  by  wind-fertilization 
or  by  stray  visits  of  pollen-hunting 
midges,  it  is  clear  that  in  the  course 
of  time  a  new  succulent  species  Avould 
be  slowly  evolved.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  goosefoots  have  really  given 
origin  to  several  such  sand-loving 
weeds,  each  of  the  principal  groups 
having  probably  a  separate  origin 
from  some  particular  kind  of  strictly 
terrestrial  goosefoot. 

After  the  saltwort  had  grown  suc- 
culent it  began  also  to  grow  prickly. 
For  sand-loving  plants  are  naturally 
exposed  to  very  great  danger  from 
herbivorous   animals,   against  which 
they  are   accordingly   compelled    to 
protect  theinselvAi   by   some   hostile 
device.     In   the    iirst  place,  there  is 
comparatively    little    vegetation    on 
sandy  spots,  so  that  each  plant  runs 
an  exceptional  chance  of  being  eaten. 
Then,  again,  thesucculenceand  juicy- 
ness   of  sand-haunting  weeds  make 
them  particularly  tempting  to  thirsty 
animals,  which  are  sure  to  eat  all  nn- 
protected  specimens.      Hence,    as   a 
rule,  only  those  survive  which  happen 
to  have  developed  some  unpleasant 
personj:!    peculiarity.       Many    sand- 
haunting  or  de;sert  plants  are  more  or 
less    put 'rent  or   have    disagreeable 
alkaline  essences   stored  up  in  their 
leaves,  and  these  alkaline  constituents, 
which   they  easily   obtain   from   the 
soil,  fornierly  caused  many  of  them 
(saltwort  and  glass  wort  among  the 
number)  to  be  burnt  for  carilla.     In 
avoidhig  the  Scylla  of  animal  tastes 
such  plants  fell  into  the  Charybdis  of 
human  industrial   usages.     But  most 
sand-loving    weeds  have   solved   the 
difficulty  in  another  way  by  simply 
acquiring  thorns  or  prickles.     In  the 
saltwort,  each  leaf  ends  in   a  stout 


spine,  which  of  course  runs  into  the 
nose  of  any  too  inquiring  cow  or 
donkey.  In  many  cactuses,  again, 
the  leaves  have  been  reduced  to  sharp 
thorns,  which  cover  the  surface  of  the 
cylindrical  stem,  and  form  the  most 
effectual  possible  protection  against 
the  attacks  of  animals.  In  the  West 
Indies,  cactus  hedges  line  all  the  roads 
in  the  plains,  and  rise  in  a  solid  wall 
to  a  height  of  fifteen  or  twenty  feet.. 
No  animal  on  earth  dare  attempt  tO' 
pass  through  such  a  hedge ;  and  the 
task  of  cutting  one  down,  when  nec- 
essary, is  extremely  difficult.  On 
bare  dry  expanses,  like  the  Mexican 
plain,  cactuses  and  agaves  run  wild 
in  every  direction,  collecting  what 
little  moisture  they  can  in  their  thick 
stems  or  big  succulent  leaves,  and  de- 
fending it  against  herbivorous  enemies 
by  their  formidable  spines.  To  pre- 
vent evaporation,  they  are  covered  by 
a  thick  and  very  firm  epidermis,  so 
that  they  lose  very  little  of  their 
moisture  even  during  months  of 
drought. 

What  these  great  desert  plants  do 
on  a  large  scale,  our  little  English 
saltwort  does  on  a  much  smaller  scale. 
It  has  the  same  strong  prickles,  the 
same  thick,  juicy  leaves,  the  same 
protective  epidermis,  and  the  same 
general  aspect  or  habit  of  growth  as 
the  cactuses  themselves.  If  one  Avere 
to  enlarge  it  twentyfold,  every  casual 
observer  would  set  it  down  as  a 
desert  species  at  once.  Indeed,  so 
naturally  do  all  these  peculiarities 
result  from  the  mode  of  life  affected 
by  sand-haunting  plants,  tb"=t  in 
India,  where  there  are  no  true  cac- 
tuses, certain  native  spurges  are 
universally  known  by  that  name,  be- 
cause they  so  exactly  resemble  them 
in  general  external  aj)pearance.  liy 
pedigree  the  two  families  are  wholly 
unconnected ;  but  in  America  certain 
weeds  of  a  kind  something  like  our 
own  stone-crops  and  house-leeks, 
having  got  loose  on  the  sand-wastes- 
of  the  tropical  belt,  adapted  them- 
selves by  thf'L  succulence  and  their 
defensive  piickles  to  the  necessities  of 
their  new  situation,    while   in   Asia. 


40  [401J 


VI(3.\ETTES  FROM  NATURE. 


certain  totally  distinct  weeds  of  a 
kind  closely  resembling  our  spurges 
and  mercuries  iiappened  to  estsiblish 
themselves  on  the  similar  sand-wastes 
of  sub-tropical  India,  and  necessarily 
adapted  themselves  in  just  the  same 
manner  to  just  the  same  sort  of  situa- 
tions. 

In  fact,  we  now  know  that  these 
ada])tive  and  functional  resemblances 
are  the  worst  possible  guide  to  rcla- 
tionshij)  by  descent.  Almost  all  plants 
which  grow  under  water  have  very 
finely  divided  leaves  ;  init  they  are  all 
aberrent  members  of  the  most  diverse 
and  widely  sei)arated  families.    They 
have  been  compelled  to  acquire  long, 
thin,  waving  leaflets  because    there 
Avas  so   little   carbonic    acid   in    the 
water  where   they   lived   that    they 
could  not  extract  carbon  enough  from 
it  to  build  up  a  full,  large,  round  type 
of  leaf :  exactly  as  all   aquatic   ani- 
mals   have    much-branched   gills   to 
catcli  the  stray  floating  particles  of 
free  Dxygen  dissolved  in  the  water, 
wliile  all  land  animals  have  big  inter- 
nal lungs,  into  which  the  abundant 
free  oxygen  of  the  atmosphere  pours 
copiously  at  every  inhalation.     Put 
any  two  distinct  groups  of  plants  or 
animals  into  exactly  similar  circum- 
slauces,  and  the  chances  are  that  they 
"Wjft  adapt  themselves  to  those  circum- 
stances in  exactly  similar  ways,  thus 
masking    their    original    unlikeness. 
But  if  vou  examine  their  minute  in- 
ternal   structure,   you   Mill   i)robably 
still  find  many  small  points  of  deep- 
seated    difference,   underlying    their 
external     adaptive    similarity ;     and 
these  points  are  the  imjiortant  clues 
which  aid  us  in  discovering  their  real 
relationship   to   unlike    groups    else- 
where.    Thus  the  humming-birds  of  i 
America  and  the  sun-birds  of  India  I 
are  extremely  similar  in  outer  appear-  j 
ance,   because  they  are  both  highly 
adapted  to  a  dower  feeding  exif^tence  ; ' 
but  their  minute  anatomy  shows  that ' 
the  one  family  are  modified  sM'ifts  or  i 
swallows,  while  the  other  family  are  ; 
modified  tropical  fruit-eaters.    Hence  ' 
we  are  landed  at  last  in  the  apparent 
paradox  so  ingeniously  pointed   out 


by  Mr.  A.  R.  Wallace,  that  the  less 
functionally  useful  any  structure  may 
be,  the  greater  becomes  its  value  as  a 
test  of  relationship  by  descent. 


XVII. 


A  MOUNTAIN  TARN. 

Onk  could  not  find  many  pleasanter 
scats  in  England,  or  Wales  either, 
than  this  big  dry  boulder,  with  a  niche 
that  seems  intentionally  designed  to 
acconmiodate  the  contour  of  the  back- 
bone, overlooking  the  calm  surface 
and  bare  craggy  sides  of  a  little 
mountain  tarn.  I  have  come  up  here 
this  morning  on  sport  intent,  to  find 
a  specimen  of  a  peculiar  species  of 
trout,  which  haunts  this  one  tiny 
sheet  of  water,  and  occurs  nowhere 
else  in  the  whole  universe.  Not  that 
I  am  an  active  sportsman  myself ;  my 
portion  of  the  service  is  always  con- 
fined to  the  attitude  of  those  Avho 
stand  and  wait;  and  I  don't  even 
stand  to-day,  having  found  so  com- 
fortable a  seat  in  the  water-worn  hol- 
lows of  a  granite  boulder.  But  the 
young  landscaj)e  painter  from  Man- 
chester, who  is  making  such  a  pretty 
l)icture  of  the  glen  from  his  tent  close 
by,  caji  throw  a  fly  as  well  as  any 
man  in  Lancashire  ;  and  when  I  men- 
tioned to  him  some  time  since  my 
wish  to  get  one  of  these  local  trout  as 
a  specimen  for  examination,  he  prom- 
ised to  entice  one  up  for  me  on  the 
very  first  morning  when  the  light 
was  unjiropitious  for  sketching  in  the 
glen.  To-day  he  dropped  in  after 
breakfast  to  tell  me  he  could  spare  me 
a  few  hours  for  fishing ;  so  here  we  are 
beside  the  tarn,  and  here  is  the  Llyn 
Gwernant  trout  in  person,  flapping 
and  floundering  on  the  bare  rock  at 
my  side — poor  creature ! — in  its  last 
gasps,  while  I  am  calmly  prepared  to 
watch  and  report  upon  its  specific  pe- 
culiarities. I  have  certain  compunc- 
tions of  my  own  about  the  morality 
of  catching  a  live  trout  for  such  a 
purpose;  but  as  my  artist  friend  still 
continues  angling  for  more,  which, 
when  caught,  I  shall  doubtless  eat  for 


VKiXETTES  FliO.M  NATURE. 


[4'ji:]  41 


supper  with  a  clear  conscience,  I  may 
as  well  stifle  my  scruples  now,  and 
lake  notes  of  my  trout  while  he  is 
still  fresh  and  lifelike.  After  all,  it  is 
just  as  legitimate,  I  suppose,  to  catch 
a  fish  in  the  interests  of  science  as  to 
catch  it  for  the  sake  of  dishing  it  up 
at  supper  in  a  tempting  brown  case 
of  egg  and  bread-crumbs. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  or  hesita- 
tion about  the  right  of  the  Llyn 
Gwernant  trout  to  rank  as  a  sejiarate 
species.  The  marks  which  distin- 
guish it  from  the  common  speckled 
trout  of  English  brooks  and  rivers 
are  many  and  undeniable.  But  the 
question  how  it  came  here  is  a  very 
curious  and  interesting  one.  We  have 
in  liritain  all  together  some  twelve 
kinds  of  trout,  peculiar  to  our  own 
islands;  and  most  of  them  are  limit- 
ed, as  in  this  case,  to  a  single  station, 
usually  a  mountain  pool  with  only 
one  precipitous  outlet.  On  the  old 
theory,  which  represented  every  spe- 
cies of  plant  or  animal  as  the  direct 
result  of  a  special  creation,  we  could 
have  had  no  alternative  but  to  sup- 
pose that  each  of  these  kinds  of 
mountain  trout  was  sj)ecially  created 
in  and  for  the  particular  little  pool 
where  we  now  find  it.  But  the  new 
theory  of  evolution  simply  teaches  us 
thateach  trout  has  been  evolved  under 
peculiar  circumstances  to  suit  the 
si)ecial  condit''>i>;-  of  these  isolated 
sheets  of  wau*.  a  which  they  live 
Let  us  look  a  lirini  closely  at  the  po- 
sition of  Llyn  Gwernant,  and  consid- 
er why  a  unique  kind  of  trout  should 
have  been  evolved  just  there  rather 
than  elsewliere. 

The  tarn  itself,  one  can  see  at  a 
glance,  must  be  a  glacial  hollow.  It 
was  scooped  out  by  the  grinding  ac- 
tion of  ice  in  the  last  glacial  epoch. 
Look  up  the  glen,  and  then  down, 
and  you  will  see  that  in  e'ther  direc- 
tion the  valley  widens  out  from  the 
lake  as  a  centre  ;  but  just  about  the 
neighborhood  of  the  lake  itself  the 
sides  trend  inwards,  so  as  to  inclose 
a  small  pass  or  gorge;  and  when  the 
whole  combe  formed  the  bed  of  an 
ancient  glacier,  the  ice  in  this   j)art 


must  have  been  crowded  together  into 
a  narrow  compass,  and  thus  squeezed 
hard  against  the  sides  and  bottom  of 
the  gorge  by  the  pressure  of  the  great 
ice-sheet  in  the  rear.  If  you  look  at 
the  rock  anywhere  around  the  lake 
you  will  see  that  it  is  worn  quite 
smooth  and  deeply  scratched  with 
ice-marks  like  those  which  occur  just 
below  the  Summer  level  of  a  glacier 
in  Switzerland  at  the  ])resent  day. 
So  the  rock-basin  in  which  the  tarn 
lies  must  itself  be  a  product  of  the 
scooping  action  of  the  glacier.  When 
the  ice  melted  awjiy  under  the  genial 
Climate  of  the  post-glacial  period,  a 
little  stream  took  the  place  of  the  vast 
frozen  mass,  and  this  stream  expanded 
in  the  hollow  till  it  tilled  the  small 
lake  and  then  ran  out  at  the  lower 
end.  Hence  the  arrival  of  the  trout 
in  Llyn  Gwernant  must  necessarily 
date  from  some  period  not  earlier 
than  the  end  of  the  last  ice  age. 
Whatever  peculiarities  they  may  dis- 
play when  compared  with  the  parent 
type  must  have  been  developed  since 
that  time.  Indeed,  even  if  the  lake 
had  been  here  before  the  glacial 
epoch,  the  ancestors  of  these  trout 
could  not  have  dwelt  in  it ;  for  we 
know  that  every  species  of  animal 
now  living  iiiBritaiii  must  necessaaly 
have  entered  the  island  since  the  ice- 
sheet  cleared  away. 

How  did  the  trout  first  get  into  the 
tarn  ?     That   seems   at   first  sight  a 
difficult  question,  for  the  onlj'^  stream 
that  comnmnicates  with  it  is  the  little 
torrent,   broken  by  a  hundred  small 
cascades,  which  drains  its  waters  into 
the  river  below.     No  fish  could  now 
possibly   leap    uj)    these    continuous 
waterfalls  from  ledge  to  ledge,  some 
of  them  as  much  as  twenty  or  thirty 
feet   high.      Hence   local   naturalists 
have  speculated  not  a  little  on  the 
origin  of  the  trout,  one  theorist  sui;- 
gesting  that  they  were  carried  hither 
by   a   waterspout,    another   that    the 
eggs  were  brou^^'.t  into  the  pool  cling- 
ing to  the  feet  of    a   water-fowl,    a 
third   that  the   ancestral    fish    were 
placed  in  situ  by  the  finger  of   the 
Aiuiighly — which  bitter  metaphor  he 


42  [493] 


VIGNETTES  FROM  NATURE. 


*!- 


does  not  deign  to  explain  for  us  in 
full.  For  my  own  part,  I  do  not  in- 
cline thus  clumsily  to  solve  the  prob- 
lem with  a  dens  ex  rnachina;  one 
cannot  fairly  consider  it  a  dignua 
vindice  nodus.  It  seems  to  me  more 
likely  that  when  the  fish  first  came 
here  the  little  stream  still  flowed  in  a 
moderately  continuous  basin,  worn 
for  it  by  the  glacier,  down  to  the 
level  of  the  river,  which  then  ran  in 
a  far  hieher  channel  than  at  present. 
Up  this  gentle  incline  the  trout  which 
were  slowly  spreading  through  the 
unoccupied  fresh  waters  of  Britain, 
after  the  thawing  of  the  great  ice- 
sheet,  must  have  made  their  way  into 
Llyn  Gwernant. 

But  when  they  had  once  got  there, 
the  brook  and  the  river  went  on  carv- 
ing their  basins  through  the  rock  and 
the  glacial  soil,  till  at  last  they  reached 
their  present  levels,  the  three  highest 
falls  on  the  brook  being  just  those 
where  it  meets  the  newer  valley  of 
the  main  stream   b}^  Dolserau   Mill. 
So  after  a  while  no  more  trout  could 
reinforce  the  small  colony  in  the  tarn, 
which  would  thus  have  room  to  de- 
velop in  thoir  own   way  to  suit  their 
own  peculiar  circumstances,  without 
any  cross  of  fresh  blood  from  the  old 
stock  to  keep  them  true  to  the  general 
type  of  the  race  in  the  lowland  rivers. 
For,  as  Mr.  A.  R.  Wallace  has  in- 
geniously pointed  out,  such  isolated 
mountain  pools  are  really  the  aquatic 
equivalents  or  analogues  of   oceanic 
islands.     In  all  such  limited  and  her- 
metically closed  habitats  every  stray 
denizen  is  liable  very  rapidly  to  under- 
go considerable  changes.     The  nature 
of  the  foodstuffs  is  new,  and   their 
variety  but  scanty ;   the  enemies,  if 
any,  are  fewer  in  number  and  differ- 
ent  in   kind ;  the   conditions    are  in 
every  way  more  restricted  and  more 
absolute  than  elsewhere.     Hence  we 
have  here  in  an  intense  degree  all  the 
known  factors  of  species  making.    On 
the  one  hand,  spontaneous  variations 
are   more    likely  to    occur    through 
change  of   food  and   circumstances; 
on  the  other  hand,    selective   action 
must  be  exerted  in  a  very  special  and 


peculiar  way.  In  the  rivers  of  the 
lowlands,  trout  are  exposed  to  the 
attacks  of  pike  and  other  savage  and 
predaceous  fish ;  here,  they  need  only 
fear  the  herons  and  the  angler.  In 
the  lowlands,  they  hide  among  weed 
or  under  banks;  here,  they  are  ex- 
posed in  full  sunshine  against  a  light 
weedless,  gravelly  bottom.  In  the 
lowlands,  they  feed  largely  upon  land 
worms  and  other  straggling  prey  ; 
here,  they  subsist  almost  entirely  upon 
flies  and  other  winged  insects.  Ac- 
cordingly, the  qualities  which  insure 
success  in  the  one  habitat  are  quite 
different  from  those  which  insure 
success  in  the  other ;  and  as  the  suc- 
cessful alone  survive  and  propagate 
their  like,  it  is  not  surprising  that 
ever  since  the  end  of  the  last  ice  age 
— probably  no  more  than  some  70,000 
years  since — as  many  as  eight  or  ten 
separate  species  of  mountain -tarn 
trout  should  have  been  evolved  in  the 
British  Isles  aione. 

At  the  same  time,  it  must  be  bonie 
in  mind  that,  Avhile  the  isolated  col- 
onies in  these  little  pools  have  been 
slowly  altering  in  one  direction  under 
the  influence  of  changed  condition  and 
of  a  more  specialized  natural  selection, 
the  trout  of  the  lowland  rivers  have 
also  doubtless  been  altering  in  another 
direction,    under    the     influence     of 
stronger  and  fiercer  competition.  The 
divergence    has    been    double-sided. 
We  must  not  take  the  existing  low- 
land trout  for  a  true  rei)re tentative  of 
the  common  ancestor,  and  then  meas- 
ure   the    deviations    of     this    Llyn 
Gwernant  species  by  that  fallacious 
standard.      If    ever  a    young  Llyn 
Gwernant  troutlet,  in  his  c!  sire  to 
see  the  world,  leaps  the  cascades  and 
ventures  down  into  the  river,  we  may 
be  sure  he  is  snapped  up  bodily  by 
the  first  pike  that  meets  him ;    and 
that  is  why  'i;is  rare  species  has  never 
spread  elsr  ,vhere.     It  is  only  suited 
to  its  owVi  habitat;   while  the  com 
mon  speckled  trout  of  our  rivers  are 
adapted  to  avoid  the  various  greater 
dangers  of  their  wider  world.     If  we 
were   to  compai'e    together    all    the 
special  mountain  trout  of  the  various 


VIGNETTES  FROM  NATURE. 


[494]  48 


Welsh  and  Scotch  pools,  we  should 
probably  find  that  they  all  agreed  in 
certain  broad  chaiacteristics  which 
really  recalled  the  original  ancestor 
more  fully  than  the  lowland  species 
recalls  him.  Only  these  broad  char- 
acteristics would  be  largely  masked 
by  the  special  adaptation  of  the  Loch 
Stennis  trout  to  the  pools  of  Orkney, 
and  of  the  Llyn  Gwemant  species  to 
this  particular  petty  Welsh  tarn. 


XVIII. 

WILD  THYME. 

Except  only  Scotch  heather — that 
artistic  saving  grace  in  our  cold  grey 
Northern  hills — I  know  no  English 
plant  which  produces  such  brilliant 
masses  of  warm  color  on  a  large  scale 
as  the  little  creeping  blossoms  of  th* 
wild  ^'lyme.  Here  on  the  hillside, 
between  the  jagged  and  jutting  edges 
of  rock,  the  rich  black  peaty  soil 
is  thickly  overgrown  with  tangled 
patches  of  its  purple  flowers ;  and  the 
sweet  scent  and  the  hum  of  bees 
mingle  in  one's  mind  with  that  in- 
delinitc  literary  charm  derived  from 
faint  suggestions  of  Puck  and  Oberon 
to  make  this  mellow  autumn  after- 
noon seem  for  a  moment  like  a  little 
bit  of  Shakespeare's  dreamland.  For 
wild  thyme  is  essentially  a  bee-flower, 
and  wherever  it  grows  you  may  see 
the  big  burly  humble-bees  and  the 
slender  little  hive  workers,  with  their 
honey-bags  well  distended  and  their 
legs  clogged  by  pollen,  bustling  about 
eagerly  from  head  to  head  of  the 
tempting  blossoms.  The  whole  labiate 
kind,  to  which  wild  thyme  belongs, 
has  been  developed  in  strici  correla- 
tion with  the  shape  and  habits  of  bees. 
No  other  family  of  plants  (except  the 
orchids)  has  flowers  more  curiously 
shaped  than  those  of  the  salvia?  and 
horchounds  ;  certainly  no  other  family 
is  so  noticeable  for  sweet  or  aromatic 
scents  as  this,  which  includes  the  sage, 
mint,  thyme,  basil,  rosemary,  balm, 
hyssop,  patchouli,  marjoram,  lavender, 
and  catmint.  Such  scents  are  always 
due  to  the  selective  action  of  the 
higher  insects,  and  are  found  only  in 


the  flowers  which  they  most  frequent 
Indeed,  we  know  geologically  of  no 
labiates  before  the  late  tertiary  period, 
which  is  just  the  time  when  highly- 
developed  bees  began  to  present 
themselves.  The  honey-seekers  and 
the  honey-producers  seem  to  have 
evolved  side  by  side  lor  one  another's 
mutual  benefit. 

There  is  another  noteworthy  point, 
however,  about  the  wild  thyme  which 
marks  it  off  from  the  rest  of  the 
labiates  in  one  respect  as  a  very  special 
and  peculiar  form.  If  you  pick  a 
little  spray  from  the  clump  that 
covers  this  hollow  in  the  rock  basin 
you  will  see  that  it  has  some  small 
unopened  buds  at  the  top  end  of  the 
spike,  some  full-blown  blossoms  half- 
way down,  and  some  overblown  flower 
cups  on  the  stalk  below.  Now,  if  you 
look  into  these  overblown  cups  you 
will  see  that  they  are  apparently  very 
shallow — much  more  shallow  than  in 
this  bit  of  hemp-nettle — another  com- 
mon labiate — which  I  have  picked  for 
comparison  with  them.  Moreover, 
the  cup  in  the  hemp-nettle  is  filled  by 
four  little  flattened  nuts  or  seeds, 
while  that  of  the  thyme  seems  to  be 
empty.  Of  course  the  object  of  all 
flowering  is  the  production  of  seeds ; 
and  one  might  at  first  sight  be 
tempted  to  suppose  that  the  thyme 
was  quite  barren,  and  so  failed  entirely 
of  its  function  in  life.  But  if  you 
cut  open  the  calyx  of  the  overblown 
thyme  blossoms  with  a  sharp  penknife 
you  will  find  that  the  bai-reuness  is 
only  pretended,  not  real.  What 
seems  to  be  the  bottom  of  the  calyx 
is  really  a  thick  wall  of  interlacing 
hairs  ;  and  beneath  this  wall  lie  four 
little  nuts,  just  like  those  of  the  hemp- 
nettle,  only  on  a  smaller  scale.  If, 
again,  you  cut  open  one  of  the  full- 
blown blossoms,  you  will  find  that  these 
hairs  may  be  seen  inside  the  calyx 
even  while  the  corolla  tube  is  entire, 
but  they  arc  then  pressed  back  against 
the  throat  by  the  tube  itself.  As 
soon,  however,  as  the  tube  and  the 
corolla  wither  and  fall  out — which 
they  do  at  once  when  they  have 
played  their  part  in  the  economy  of 


44  [405] 


VIGNETTES  FROM  NATURE. 


I  I 


the  plant  by  inducing  a  bee  to  visit 
and  fertilize  it — the  little  hairs,  re- 
lieved of  this  pressure,  jump  out  by 
their  own  elasticity,  and  completely 
obstruct  the  entrance  to  the  calyx, 
thus  forming,  as  it  were,  a  false  bot- 
tom. Unless  you  were  in  the  secret 
you  would  take  it  for  granted  that  the 
ciilyx  was  empty,  and  had  either 
shed  its  nutlets  or  else  never  contained 
any  at  all. 

Now  this  is  exactly  the  impression 
which  the  plant  Avishes  to  in'oduce ; 
01-,  to  put  it  more  correctly,  it  is  be- 
cause the  plant  has  thus  succeeded  in 
producing  a  Wjng  impression  on  the 
minds  of  birds  and  insects  that  it  has 
acquired  this  false  bottom  of  inter- 
lacing hairs,  and  has  so  survived  in 
the  struggle  for  existence  Why  the 
wild  thyme  finds  such  deception  ])ay 
is  simple  enough  to  understand.  Here 
close  at  hand  is  a  bit  of  mouse-ear 
chickweed,  well  in  fruit.  The  plant 
is  covered  by  numbers  of  little  ca])- 
sules,  each  containing  a  dozen  seeds 
or  more ;  but  if  you  cut  them  open 
you  will  find  almost  every  capsule,  in 
this  district  at  least,  has  been  invaded 
by  a  perfect  plague  of  little  red  or 
orange  worms,  ^"hich  devour  most  of 
the  seeds  before  Lhey  arrive  at  ma- 
turity. Hence  the  chickweed,  being 
unprotected  against  their  depreda- 
tions, is  obliged  to  produce  an  enor- 
mous quantity  of  seeds,  at  a  ruinous 
cost  to  its  constitution,  most  of  which 
get  eaten  up  without  doing  any  good 
at  all  to  the  species.  For  aught  we 
know  to  the  contrary,  these  red  worms 
may  be  nowincourseof  exterminating 
the  chickweed,  much  as  the  Colorado 
beetle  would  exterminate  the  potato, 
or  as  the  phylloxera  would  extermi- 
nate the  vine,  if  we  did  not  invent  all 
kinds  of  Paris  greens  and  institute 
all  sorts  of  national  quarantines  to 
check  their  triumphal  progress.  Every 
now  and  then  some  new  insect  pest  in 
this  way  sweeps  across  a  continent, 
killing  or  threatening  to  kill  s-me 
particular  species ;  and  when  the 
plant  which  it  attacks  is  one  useful  to 
roan  we  note  and  chronicle  its  advance, 
which  we  are  often  successful  in  ar- 


resting ;  but  when  the  invasion  is  only 
directed  against  a  common  weed  none 
but  naturalists  observe  its  course,  and 
even  they  can  hardly  obtain  the 
proper  data  for  estimating  its  j.J, 
vance,  since  nobody  keeps  a  record  of 
the  acreage  under  knotweed,  or  the 
average  yearly  yield  of  the  goosefoot 
crop. 

Now  if,  in  such  a  case,  any  par- 
ticular plants  of  the  infested  species 
happen  to  be  protected  against  the  in- 
truder by  some  small  peculiarity  of 
structure,  they  will  survive  when  their 
fellows  perish,  and  a  new  species  will 
tend  to  be  set  up,  possessing  the  pe- 
culiarity which  saved  the  lives  of  its 
ancestors.  This,  or  something  like 
this,  is  wlifit  must  have  happened  to 
the  wild  thyme  and  its  close  relative 
the  marjoram.  They  found  them- 
selves exposed  to  some  special  danger 
which  did  not  threaten  the  other  and 
larger  labiates ;  and  those  alone  sur- 
vived which  possessed  in  a  nascient 
form  this  fringe  of  hairs  -  ^ncealing 
the  nuts  within.  Perhaps  the  select- 
ive agency  at  work  was  some  small 
bird  or  insect  which  could  not  tackle 
the  larger  and  harder  nutlets  of  the 
dead-nettle  and  the  stachys :  perhaps 
it  was  some  creeping  worm  against 
which  the  stiff  and  prickly  stem  hairs 
of  the  bigger  species  formed  an 
efficient  cheoaux  de  /rise.  At  any 
rate,  the  hairy  fringe  in  the  throat  of 
the  calyx  of  the  wild  thyme  protected 
its  seeds  against  some  danger  to 
which  they  would  otherwise  have 
been  exposed;  and  only  those  indi- 
viduals which  possessed  it  finally 
survived  in  the  struggle  for  life. 

Such  special  means  of  protection 
for  ripening  fruits  or  seeds  are  com- 
mon enough  in  nature ;  but  it  is 
curious  how  vast  is  the  variety  of 
form  or  device  which  they  assume. 
Here,  for  instance,  in  the  bit  of  boggy 
land  formed  by  the  little  rill  on  its 
way  through  the  rock  basin,  another 
small  labiate  grows  in  profusion,  the 
lesser  skullcap.  Now  skullcap  takes 
its  name  from  a  peculiarity  of  its  own, 
which  answers  in  a  different  way  just 
the  same  purpose  as  the  interlacing 


VIGNETTES  FROM  NATURE. 


[490]  45 


hairs  of  the  wild  thyme.  On  the 
back  of  the  calyx  is  a  large  Hcale  or 
raised  spur,  which  looks  something 
like  the  shade  of  an  old-fashioned 
cap  while  the  flower  is  in  full  bloom ; 
but  as  soon  as  the  corolla  has  withered 
the  upper  lip  of  the  calyx  closes  over 
the  four  nutlets,  while  this  scale  as- 
sumes its  place  and  so  produces  the 
effect  of  an  empty  seed-vessel.  Any 
prying  bird  or  insect  whicli  looked 
mto  such  a  calyx  on  its  foraging  ex- 
peditions would  be  sure  to  conclude 
that  it  had  already  shed  its  seeds, 
and  so  go  off  to  another  plant.  Thus 
in  two  closely  related  species  we  see 
two  totally  different  plans  for  securing 
the  self-sams  end.  In  one  group,  the 
originally  accidental  presence  of  a  few 
hairs  in  the  throat  gave  riso  to  a  new 
departure  in  one  direction  ;  in  another 
group,  the  habit  of  closing  over  the 
nuts,  with  perhaps  the  rudiment  of  a 
scale  on  the  back,  gave  rise  to  a  differ- 
ent dei)arture  iti  another  direction. 

The  hop  supplies  us  with  a  very 
similar  case  in  a  widely  unlike  family 
of  plants.  Ho})s,  as  Kentish  farmers 
know  only  too  well,  are  liable  to 
attack  from  "  the  fly  "  and  many  other 
enemies.  To  protect  their  seeds,  the 
hope  of  future  generations,  from 
these  marauders,  the  vines  have  hit 
out  the  i)lan  of  producing  hops,  that 
is  to  say,  little  leafy  imbricated  cones 
which  covers  the  blossoms.  After 
flowering,  the  scales  »j.  the  cone  be- 
come much  enlarged,  and  quite  con- 
ceal the  small  seed-like  fruits  ;  and  it 
is  these  protective  organs  which  we 
Northern  nations  apply  to  our  own 
uses,  corrupting  corn  with  them,  as 
Tacitus  naively  remarks,  hi  quandam 
vim  similitudinem.  Indeed,  it  may 
be  said  roughly  that  human  beings 
invariably  defeat  the  original  inten- 
tion of  plants,  by  cultivathig  and 
selecting  them  in  order  to  eat  up  those 
very  seeds,  fruits,  roots,  and  tubers 
which  the  plants  themselves  had 
richly  stored  with  starches,  albumens, 
and  other  food-stuffs  for  the  use  of 
themselves  or  their  descendants.  We 
plunder  the  storehouses  which  the 
species  designed  for  its  own  benefit ; 


yet  by  saving  some  for  seed  and  sow- 
ing it  in  fitly  prepared  places  we  keep 
up  the  life  of  the  species  far  more 
effectually  than  it  could  ever  have 
been  kept  up  had  the  plant  been  left 
entirely  to  its  own  devices. 


THE 


XIX. 
DONKEY'S    ANC;EST0RS. 


Hk  is  a  dear  shaggy  old  donkey, 
with  the  true  pathetic  donkey  eyes, 
and  that  wonderful  donkey  power  of 
making  himself  perfectly  happy  on  a 
bare  rocky  hillside,  upon  four  sprout- 
ing thistles,  a  bit  of  prickly  carline, 
and  three  8<piare  yards  of  wet  turf  at 
the  outcrop  of  the  little  spring,  over- 
grown with  rank  bog-asphodel  and 
stringy  goose-grass.  Given  this  de- 
licious pabulum,  with  five  minutes' 
total  freedom  from  beating  or  bully- 
ing, and  your  shaggy  donkey  is  in  his 
seventh  heaven.  That  is  what  con- 
stitutes the  true  poetry  and  patlios  of 
his  life.  I  ari  not  ashamed  to  side 
with  ColeridL,e  on  that  question,  in 
spite  of  the  sneers  in  "English Bards," 
or  in  "Rejected  Addresses."  A 
donkey  is  a  really  pathetic  and  sym- 
pathy-rousing figure  in  nature,  be- 
cause, Avith  all  his  hard  blows  and 
buffeting,  he  retains  to  the  last  a 
bi-ave  cheery  philosophy  which  teaches 
him  to  take  an  optimistic  view  of 
things  whenever  it  is  possible — a  sort 
of  monochronic  hedonism  under  difti- 
culties — that  contrasts  favorably  with 
the  despondent  Hartmannic  theories 
of  the  universe  so  much  in  favor  with 
well-fed  and  bushy-bearded  German 
])rofessors.  Schopenhauer's  demonstra- 
tions ti'ouble  him  not :  Mr.  Mallock's 
doubts  as  to  the  abstract  desirability  of 
existence  enter  not  into  his  thoughtful 
pate :  let  him  but  loose  from  his  hai'd 
day's  work  to  a  dinner  of  herbs  of  the 
toughest,  and  he  forgets  the  pessim- 
istic problem  forthwith  in  the  delights 
I  of  freedom  and  the  exquisite  pungency 
of  his  tuft  of  thistle  head.  Shall  we 
not  strive  to  make  life  a  little  easier 
I  in  the  future  for  such  a  patient,  hard- 
j  working,  brave-hearted,  indomitable 
little  philosopher  as  this  ? 


46  [407] 


VIGNETTES  FROM  NATURE. 


How,  indeed,   could   the  common 
and  universal  notions  about  the  stu- 
pidity of  donkeys  ever  have  origin- 
ated.    A  sheep,  if  you  will,  is  stupid, 
and    so    is    a    rabbit;   but   I  doubt 
whether  there  is  really  in  all  nature  a 
more  careful,  sensible,  intelligent,  and 
wide-minded  brute  than  the  common 
donkey.     I  have  always  admired  the 
genuine   penetration  of  those   South 
American  mountaineers  who  told  Mr. 
Darwin  that  they  would  give  him  the 
"most   rational"   nmle  on  which  to 
cross  a  dangerous  pass  of  the  Andes. 
They  knew  the  caj)acities  of  the  mule ; 
and  I  have  no  doubt  tlioy  knew  those 
of  the  donkey  too.  The  fact  is,  every 
one  who  has  watched  donkeys  closely 
must  have  noticed  innumerable  proofs 
of  their  unusual  mental  gifts.     They 
stand,  with  the  horse,  the  elephant,  the 
camel,  and  the  monkeys,  at  the  head 
of    the    animal  world,    intellectually 
considered.  (Dogs,  of  course,  I  put  out 
of  consideration,  as  ])roducts  of  direct 
human  teaching).     But  donkeys  are 
the  final  flower  of  long  ages  of  native 
evolution,  the  natural  head  and  crown 
of  one  great  line  of  mammalian  de- 
velopment.     To  doubt  their  intelli- 
gence is  to  impugn  the  whole  conduct 
of  nature,  to  upset  the  entire  system 
of  evolutionary  ])sychology  off-hand. 
Donkeys   cannot   help   being  clever, 
because  they  are  the  Mnal  survivors  in 
the  struggle  for  existence  in  one  of 
the    most    specialized,    most    highly 
developed,  and  most  dominant  mam- 
malian stocks.  They  do  not  represent 
mere  stranded   and  struggling  relics 
of    older  types,    like   the    very  silly 
kangaroos,  and  ant-eaters,  and  hedge- 
hogs,  which   drag    on    a    miserable 
existence  behind  the  times  in  out-of- 
the-way    holes   and   corners    of    the 
earth  ;  they  are  one  of  the  finest  de- 
velopments of  one  of  the  most  success- 
ful branches  of  the  great  progressive 
ungulate    tribe.     I    feel    a    genuine 
respect  for  every  donkey  I  meet  when 
I  remember  that  it  was  the  mere  acci- 
dental   possession    of    an  opposable 
thumb  that  gave  my  ancestors  a  start 
over  his  in  the  race  for  the  inheritance 
of  the  earth  towards  the  very  close 
of  the  tertiary  period. 


Of  course  everybody  knows  the 
wonderful  pedigree  of  the  horse  and 
donkey  family,  which  has  been  din 
covered  imprinted  upon  the  latei- 
formations  of  America  by  Professor 
Marsh,  and  reconstructed  for  us  in 
full  by  Professor  Huxley.  The  horses 
are  an  extremely  aberrant  form  of 
the  ungulate  tribe,  and  their  very 
earliest  recognizable  ancestor  must 
have  had  some  points  of  resemblance 
with  the  tapirs,  some  with  the  pigs, 
some  with  the  deer — nay,  some  even 
with  the  prototype  of  the  lemurs  and 
of  man  himself.  In  the  lowest  eocene 
beds  of  New  Mexico,  Professor  Marsh 
has  found  the  first  shadowy  fore- 
runner of  my  donkey — an  equine 
quadruped  which  he  has  appropriately 
called  eohippus,  with  five  toes  to  each 
hind  foot,  and  probably  to  each  fore 
foot  as  well.  Already,  however,  this 
very  vague  progenitor  of  the  horse 
family  had  begun  to  develop  towards 
the  distinctive  peculiarity  of  his  r.ice 
— the  solid  hoof,  adapted  to  free 
scouring  over  open  grass-grown  plains; 
for  one  of  his  five  toes  is,  even  at  this 
early  period,  only  in  a  rudimentary 
condition.  In  the  higher  eocenes  of 
Wyoming  and  Utah,  we  get  a  rather 
more  horse-like  creature,  orohippus, 
a  big  as  a  fox,  with  four  toes  to  his 
front  feet  and  three  to  his  hind  feet. 
Then,  only  about  a  million  years  or  so 
later,  in  the  miocene  of  Oregon  and 
Nebraska,  we  find  two  more  special- 
ized equine  animals,  miohippus  and 
mesohippus,  as  big  as  a  sheep,  with 
three  hoofed  toes  on  the  front  feet,  of 
which  the  middle  one  is  distinctly  the 
largest,  being,  in  fact,  the  forerunner 
of  the  one  final  hoof  in  our  own  horses. 
In  the  pliocene,  again,  we  come  upon 
the  bones  of  hipparion  and  proto- 
hippus,  as  big  as  this  donkey,  with 
one  stout  middle  toe,  much  like  our 
modern  horse's  hoof,  and  a  lateral 
one  on  each  side  which  does  not  reach 
to  the  ground.  Side  by  side  with 
these  very  horse-like  forms  occurs 
another  even  more  specialized  type, 
pliohippus,  in  Avhich  the  lateral  toes 
have  become  reduced  to  mere  splint- 
bones,  as  in  our  existing  species. 
Here,  we  have  all  often  been  told,  we 


VIGNETTES  FIIOM  NATURE. 


[498]  47 


have  probably  preserved  for  us  several 
distinct  steps  in  the  evolution  of  our 
horses  and  donkeys.  One  solid  hoof 
on  each  foot  gives  unarmed  herbivo- 
rous animals  of  their  peculiar  habits 
the  best  possible  chance  in  the  struggle 
for  life  ;  and  so  towards  the  develop- 
ment of  this  one  hoof  they  have  been 
slowly  verging  ever  since  eocene 
times,  by  the  gradual  enlargement  of 
the  central  toe,  and  the  gradual  sup- 
pression of  all  thu  rest.  They  have 
no  horns  like  the  bison  and  the 
buJalo  ;  but  by  their  swiftness  and 
sureuess  of  foot  wild  horses  are  able 
easily  to  hold  their  own  against  all 
carnivorous  enemies  on  the  grassy 
pampas  of  South  America,  as  zebras 
do  on  the  great  South  African  plateau, 
and  onagers  on  the  broad  steppes  of 
Central  Asia. 

Most  people,  however,  do  not  know 
that  pari  passu   with   this  develop- 
ment   of    a    special    form    of    hoof 
adapted  to  the  free  roaming  existence 
of  the  horse  tribe  there  has  gone  on  a 
constant  increase  in  the  relative  size 
and  weight  of  the  brain.     Our  com- 
parative anatomists  as  a  rule  naturally 
attach   most  importance   to  the  de- 
velopment of  the  bony  skeleton,  and 
especially  of  those  parts   which  are 
most   charact   "istic   of   families    and 
genera.     Psycnology  is  a  subject  that 
interests   them    comparatively   little. 
Hence  we  lay-readers  are  apt  to  get 
rather   surfeited  with  descriptions  of 
changes  in  the  supra-condyloid  fora- 
men or  the   lateral   ethmoid,    about 
which  the  world  at  large  is  culpably 
indiflferent:    while    we    hear   hardly 
anything  as  to  the  evidences  of  mental 
development,  about  which  the  world 
at  large  feels  a  much  more  genuine 
interest.     As  a  matter  of  fact,  in  the 
pedigree  of  the  horse  and  the  donkey 
there  is  abundant  proof  of  such  pro- 
gress.     The   brain   of  the   evolving 
horse  tribe  goes  on  increasing  (as  we 
judge  from  the  skulls)  Avith  every  ad- 
vance in   structure  through   tertiary 
times,  not  only  absolutely  as  the  whole 
animal  grows  bigger,  but  relatively 
also  in  proportion  to  the  other  parts. 
Indeed,  there  has  been  a  regular  in 


crease  in  intelligence  and  brain-power 
among  all  the  mammalia  from  the  mo- 
ment of  their  first  appearance  upon 
the  earth  till  the  present  time. 

Such  an  increase  naturally  results 
from  the  very  conditions  of  evolution. 
Not  only  the  strongest  and  the  phys- 
ically best  adapted  have  survived  in 
the  long  run,  but  the  cleverest  and 
the  shiftiest  as  well.  All  very  early 
mammals,  discovered  sparsely  in  the 
secondary  formations,  have  extremely 
small  and  ill-developed  brains.  All 
surviving  isolated  archaic  fornjs,  pre- 
served in  special  and  long  insulated 
areas,  far  from  the  fierce  competition 
of  higher  types,  as  is  the  case  with 
the  marsupials  of  Australia,  the  low 
lemuroid  animals  of  INIudagascar,  and 
the  edentates  of  South  America,  have 
brains  hardly  better  than  these  ])rimi- 
tive  species.  All  ancient  types  which 
still  linger  on  as  burrowers  or  noc- 
turnal prowlers  in  the  great  conti- 
nents, like  our  own  moles  and  shrews 
and  hedgehogs,  have  also  a  very  low 
grade  of  intelligence,  and  a  very 
poorly  developed  brain ;  but,  as  we 
rise  toward  the  summit  of  each  great 
specialized  and  differentiated  line  of 
modei'n  mammals,  we  find  a  constant 
increase  in  intelligence  and  brain- 
power, exactly  analogous  to  that 
which  we  can  trace  historically  in  the 
horse  tribe.  The  central  and  least 
developed  forms,  like  the  rodents  and 
still  more  the  insectivores,  are  com- 
paratively stupid  and  helpless ;  but 
the  highly  adapted  creatures  which 
represent  the  final  outcome  of  the 
main  divei-gent  branches — such  as  the 
ungulates,  the  carnivores,  and  the 
quadrumana— are  all  remarkable  for 
their  exceptional  intelligence.  Of 
these  crowning  species,  the  horse  and 
the  donkey  stand  at  the  head  of  their 
own  line,  just  as  man  stands  at  the 
head  of  the  quadrumana,  or  as  the  ele- 
phant and  the  tiger  stand  at  the  head 
of  their  special  geneaological  trees.  So 
that  the  donkey  really  cannot  well 
avoid  being  an  exti'emely  clever  brute. 
Isot  quite  so  clever,  to  be  sure,  as  the 
higher  monkeys  and  the  elephants; 
for,    as    Mr.    Herbert   Spencer    has 


48  [490] 


VIGNETTES  FROM  NATURE. 


pointed  out,  tho  opposable  thiunV)  and  i  that  I  am  well  rewarded  for  my  pains ; 
the  highly  nio))iie  trunk  with  its  tac- !  for  I  can  see  the  whole  peninsula  from 
tile  api)en<lagogive  these  creatures  an  '  Siiowdon  on  to  liraich-y-PwIl  rising 
exceptional  chance  of  grasping  an  |  and  sinking  in  hill  or  lowland,  and  at 
object  all  roinid,  and  so  of  thoroughly  I  the  very  end  of  all,  Uardsey,  the  Isle 
learning  its  physical  properties,  which  (of  Hards,  stands  scpuvre  and  solid 
has  put  thorn  intellectually  in  the  against  the  sky-line,  with  a  solitary 
very  front  rank  of  the  animal  world ;   ship  under  full  sail  showing  in    the 


but  in  the  carnivores,  the  ruminants, 
and  the  horse  tribe,  a  very  delicate 
sense  of  smell  seems  almost  to  make 
up  for  the  want  of  a  special  grasping 
organ.       At    any   rate    the    leading 


very  centre   of  the  soinul,   and   the 
Irisii  Sea  stretching  away  to  south 
ward,  distinct  and  blue,  as  far  as  the 
eye  can  reach. 

The  cromlech  itself  is  a  tine  speci- 


niembers  of  these  groups — the  cats,  j  men  of  a  megalithic  structure,  piled  up 
bears,  camels,  deer,  bison,  horse,  and  i  of  four  large  boulders  from  the  neigl.- 
donkey — are  all  of  them  conspicuous  |  boring  hillside,  and  but  lii  tie  squared 
among  their  compeers  for  the  rela- 1  or  hewn  by  artificial  means.  The  bould- 


tively  iiigh  quality  of  their  intellectual 
gifts. 

XX. 

BESIDE  THE  CROMLECH. 

On  the  long  spur  where  the  path 
loses  itself  auiong  bracken  and 
heather,  just  below  the  summit  of 
Mynydd  Mawr,  I  met  an  Ancient 
Briton,  from  whom  I  tried  to  learn 
tho  way  to  the  cromlech.  Unfortun- 
ately, my  Ancient  Briton,  "had  not 
the  English,"  and  so  failed  to  com- 
prehend the  questions  I  put  to  him  ; 
but,  by  mustering  all  my  stock  of 
Welsh  in  a  supreme  effort,  I  man- 
aged at  last  to  make  him  understand 
what  it  w^as  that  I  wanted.  "  Oh, 
ay,"  he  says,  in  his  native  Cymric,  ]  away  by  the  rude  tools  of  the  ])rimi- 
politely  swallowing  down  his  rising  !  tive  cromlech  builders,  in  order  rough- 
smile  at  my  imperfect  IPh  and  cA's.  ly  to  shape  the  irregular  masses  for 
"You  mean  the  Fairy's  Grave.  Cross  their  present  position.  For  of  course 
past  the  llyn  and  up  the  ledge  of  Crib  \  cromlechs,  though  very  ancient  from 
Goch,  and  you'll  find  it  on  the  very  :  the  historical  point  of  view,  are  quite 
crest  of  Mynydd."  I  will  not  assert  |  modern  in  tlie  geological  or  even  the 
that  I  fully  understood  him  in  every  i  anthropological  estimate.  They  have 
word,  but  that  was  certainly  the  gist  i  been  erected  a  long  way  on  tlie  hither 


ers  do  not  belong  to  the  same  Cam- 
brian rock  as  the  underlying  hill; 
they  are  fragments  of  Snowdonian 
granite,  transported  hither  by  the 
glaciers  of  the  great  ice  age,  which 
scratched  the  grooves  and  furrows  on 
the  naked  limestone  of  the  mountain 
itself.  I  can  trace  these  grooves  all 
around  me  on  every  hand ;  and  in- 
deed the  bossed  and  rounded  surface 
of  all  the  shoulders  would  in  itself 
sulKce  to  suggest  glacial  action  im- 
mediately to  any  geological  eye. 
Similar  markings  occur  on  the  sides 
of  the  three  upright  stones  in  the 
cromlech,  and  on  the  under  front  of 
the  table-stone  Avhich  lies  across 
them;  but  here  and  there  the  origi- 
mil   striated    surface    h.as    been   cut 


of  his  directions,  eked  out  by  a  good 
deal  of  gesture  and  pantomime;  and, 
at  any  rate,  here  I  am  at  last,  stretched 
out  at  full  length  under  the  shadow  of 
the  great  monoliths  and  looking  across 
the  bay,  whitened  by  the  foam  of 
Sarn  Badrig,  to  the  long,  clear-cut 
blue    range    of    the   Carnarvonshire 


side  of  the  glacial  epoch.  There  were 
men  in  Britain  before  the  last  ice  age, 
and  they  have  left  their  memorials  in 
the  rough  chipped  tlint  implements  of 
the  drift  and  on  the  bardened  floors 
of  caves ;  but  every  trace  of  their 
presence  has  of  course  been  planed 
off  the  actual  surface  of  the  country 


mountains.     The  sky  is  cloudless  and  ;  by  the  great  sheets  of  ice  which,  dur 
the  horizon  very  free  from  mist,  so  ing  the  last  glaciation,  ground  down 


TI0NETTE8  PROM  NATTTHE. 


[000]  4t» 


the  whole  face  of  England  into  bare 
undulating  folds  of  naked  rock.  Tlu* 
prehiatorio  monurnunts  which  we  now 
find  on  the  surface  of  the  land,  like 
this  Welsh  cromlech  or  the  numerous 
barrows  <»f  our  English  downs,  be- 
long to  a  much  later  race,  as  one  can 
see  at  once  frotn  the  very  fact  that 
they  are  so  often  built  uj)  of  glacial 
boulders.  Indeed,  the  earlier  pregla- 
cial  men  were  mere  hunting  savages 
of  the  rudest  type,  wholly  incapable 
of  co-operation  for  works  such  as 
these ;  BO  that  even  if  the  ice  had  not 
swept  away  every  trace  of  them,  as 
it  has  now  swept  over  the  whole  face 
of  Greenland,  we  should  still  have 
few  monuments  of  such  early  date 
save  only  the  angular  hatchets  of  the 
drift  and  the  shapelier  bone  harpoons 
of  the  whale  hunting  cave-men. 

Originally  this  cromlech  must  have 
been  covered  with  a  barrow.  It 
formed,  indeed,  the  central  chamber 
of  a  neolithic  tomb  ;  and  over  it  the 
earth  was  once  heaped  up  in  a  great 
and  conspicuous  pile.  In  England, 
as  a  rule,  the  barrows  still  survive, 
especially  in  all  the  southeastern 
plain  and  the  lesser  hills  or  downs. 
But  in  Wales  and  Cornwall,  and  in 
the  more  mountainous  regions  gener- 
ally, where  soil  is  scanty  and  denud- 
ing agents  act  more  rapidly,  the  bar- 
rows have  oftener  been  washed  away 
by  rain  or  torrents  or  slowly  crum- 
bled down  by  sun  and  wind.  That,  «o 
doubt,  is  partly  the  reason  why  peo- 
ple generally  believe  that  "Druidical 
remains,"  as  they  choose  to  call  them, 
are  specially  frequent  in  these  Keltic 
regions.  It  seems  natural  enough  to 
suppose  that  ancient  British  monu- 
ments should  be  carefully  preserved 
in  such  outlying  spots  as  these  where 
the  Ancient  Britons  still  survive  in 
almost  unmixed  purity.  But,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  the  cromlechs  are 
really  less  preserved  here  than  else- 
where, because  their  barrows  have 
mostly  been  washed  away,  and  the 
body  within  has  long  since  disap- 
peared. The  best  preserved  crom- 
lechs are,  of  course,  those  which  you 
cannot  see  at  all,  because  they  ar« 


still  (!overed  with  their  inclosing 
m<Mind  of  earth  and  still  (M>ntain  the 
bones  and  relics  of  the  dead  mm 
within  them.  It  is  the  desecrated 
tomb  that  we  call  a  Druidical  moini- 
ment ;  the  undes«'cri.  .nl  we  only  de- 
scribe as  a  prehistoric  barrow. 

There  can  be  very  little  ddubt  that 
this  cronih'ch,  like  all  others,  was 
once  upon  a  time  the  tomb  of  an  early 
chieftain.  F^'om  the  general  charac- 
ter of  its  workmanship,  and  the  very 
slight  extent  to  which  the  stones  have 
been  dressed,  I  feci  pretty  confident 
that  it  must  belong  rather  to  the  neo- 
lithic than  to  the  bronze  age.  Hither, 
some  day  five  thousand  years  since — 
perhaps  ten  thousand  for  all  that  sci- 
ence can  say — a  crowd  of  brown- 
skinned,  short-statured  tribesmen  bore 
up  the  dead  body  of  their  chief  from 
the  village  in  the  clearing  on  the  lit- 
tle stream  below.  Here  with  wooden 
levers  and  round  logs  for  rollers  they 
tollfuUy  brought  together  by  sheer 
force  of  straining  sinews  these  four 
great  ice-worn  boulders  which  lay 
scattered  upon  the  slope  around.  On 
the  crest  of  Mynydd  Mawr  they  hewed 
them  into  rough  symmetiy,  and  built 
them  into  a  rude  imitation  of  the  roy- 
al hut,  first  placing  the  three  uprights 
in  position,  and  then  prising  up  the 
flat  roofing-stone  with  their  log  rollers 
over  an  inclined  plane  of  loose  earth. 
In  the  hut  thus  formed  they  placed 
the  dead*  body  of  their  chief,  with  his 
weapons,  his  ornaments,  and  his 
household  goods,  that  his  ghost  might 
eat,  drink,  and  fight  in  the  world  of 
ghosts  as  it  had  done  in  the  valley 
below.  Then  they  piled  up  the  great 
mound  of  eartii  above  it  to  keep  the 
body  safe  from  beasts  or  birds ;  and 
around  the  fresh  heap  they  performed 
I  know  not  what  barbaric  orgies  of 
dancing  and  sacrifice  and  human  mas- 
sacres. Perhaps  the  wives  and  slaves 
of  the  dead  man  were  slain  and 
buried  with  him,  to  attend  hiniin  the 
other  world;  perhaps  the  blood  of 
human  victims  was  poured  over  the 
new-made  grave  as  an  offering  to  the 
thirsty  ghost.  Sitting  in  this  peace- 
ful industrial  nineteenth  century  on 


60  [OOIJ 


VIGNETTES  FKOM  NATURE. 


tho  flrv  hofitlior  nndor  the  shadow  of 
iIr'sc  |.iciurt!'ijiie  old  stones,  one  cuii 
hardly  rt'uli/.*'  what  iiaiiicU'ss  horrors 
they  may  not  liave  witnessed  on  the 
day  when  the  neolithic  dwellers  in  the 
Llanl'.iir  valley  lirst  raised  them  above 
thesuin'iiit  ol'  Myny<ld  Mawr.  We 
think  of  Jiem  only  under  the  soften- 
ing and  romantie  iniluenee  of  time ; 
we  look  upon  their  lichen-covered 
surface  through  the  tinged  halo  of 
poetical  imagination ;  they  are  to  us 
the  lioary  remnants  of  ourforefatlu'rs' 
world,  tl>e  titanic,  archaic,  immemo- 
rial tea»j)lcs  of  a  forgotten  creed.  We 
do  not  remember  how  terrible  an<l 
sickerung  were  the  realities  of  which 
these  grey  and  yellow-stained  granite 
bosses  are  the  sole  remaining  vouch- 
ers. Time  has  turned  the  relics  of 
some  Dahomey  custom  into  ii  pretty 
antiquated  landmark  and  a  ronuintic 
spot  for  holding  a  picnic. 

Since  then  the  rain  has  washed  down 
every  ] (article  of  soil  that  formerly 
covered  the  dead  chieftain's  grave. 
But  still  the  memory  of  what  it  all 
once  meant  has  lived  on  unniterrupt- 
edly  in  the  minds  of  the  Ancient  Brit- 
ons around  the  spot.  While  the  doc- 
tors of  the  eigliteenth  century  were 
talking  learned  nonsense  about  Dru- 
idical  temples  and  Arkite  worship, 
the  Welsh  peasants  of  Mynydd  Mawr 
were  speaking  coi'rectly  every  day  of 
the  Fairy's  Grave.  For  fairies  and 
goblins  and  all  such  Keltic  supersti- 
tions are  mainly  based  upon  stories 
about  the  ghosts  of  these  neolithic 
people,  Avhom  the  Keltic  Welsh  over- 
came and  enslaved.  But  they  would 
not  touch  the  graves  where  lay  the 
chieftains  of  the  conquered  folk,  lest 
harm  should  come  upon  them  for  the 
desecration.  Many  of  the  neolithic 
people  lived  on  as  serfs  under  the 
Kelts,  and  much  of  their  blood  may 
be  noted  in  the  Llanfair  villages  at 
the  pi'esent  day.  The  Bi'iton  who 
told  me  the  road  liere  was  himself, 
indeed,  much  more  than  an  Ancient 
Briton ;  he  was  partly,  at  least,  one  of 
the  Ancientest  Britons,  a  dark-haired, 
squat,  brown-skinned  man,  of  the  reg- 
ular   long-headed     Euskarian    type. 


'  Professor  Hhys  has  hoard  men  taunted 
even  now  at  ('arnarvon  with  being 
the  descendants  of  fairies;  tint  is  to 
say,  I  take  it,  with  being  meniliersor 
the  servile  race  ;  just  as  in  Americrii, 
supposing  blacks  and  whites  to  have 
amalgamated  for  centuries,  it  niigli, 
still  b(^  a  term  of  insult  t(»  call  a  niaii 
a  nigger.  When  \\v  remember  that 
in  all  popular  tradition  the  fairies  arc 
said  to  live  inside  green  grass-grown 
hills,  and  that  their  names  are  always 
connected  with  the  prehistoric  iu'd 
lithic  monuments  of  each  particular 
district,  a  cromlech  such  as  this,  thi- 
Fairy's  (4rave,  gains  in  our  eyes  a 
double  interest.  F"'or  while  on  the 
one-hand  it  is  the  undoubted  burial 
place  of  a  Euskarian  chief,  on  the 
other  hand  it  is  the  almost  certain 
birth  place  of  a  Keltic  fairy  tradition. 

XXI 

THE  FALL  OF  THE  LE^   ^\ 

Ai.UKAOY  the  trees  on  the  hillside 
are  beginning  to  assume  their  au 
tuninal  tints.  Down  in  the  valley,  it 
is  true,  beside  the  artificial  water  in 
the  park,  the  oaks,  the  willows,  and 
the  ash  trees  are  still  quite  green ; 
but  higher  up  among  the  slopes, 
where  the  wind  beats  harder  and  the 
nights  even  now  begin  to  grow  chilly, 
the  limes  and  chestnuts  have  put  on 
their  first  pale  streaks  of  yellow,  the 
beeches  have  turned  in  places  to  a 
rich  brown,  and  the  mountain  ashes 
are  faintly  purpling  against  the  glow- 
ing bunches  of  their  scarlet  berries. 
On  all  the  deciduous  trees,  indeed, 
one  can  see  that  the  living  protoplasm 
is  just  beginning  to  withdraw  from 
the  foliage  into  the  permanent  tissues, 
leaving  only  those  beautiful  minor 
principles  whose  deficient  vitality 
produces  the  lovely  colors  of  Autumn 
leaves.  It  is  the  fashion  to  say  that 
our  English  woodlands  cannot  com 
pare  in  this  respect  with  American  or 
Canadian  forests ;  and,  no  doubt,  if 
we  look  only  at  the  general  effect  in 
the  two  hemispheres  the  trite  remark 
j  is  true  enough.  America  has  un- 
I  deniably  one  tree — the  maple — whose 


lONETTKS  KROM  NATURK 


[^08]  51 


follftjijt'  fii<l«'H  under  that  |iHi'ti(Milar 
cliiiiiite  into  i^radiiatcrl  tints  of  i-riiii- 
sun,  Hc'!irlc;t.  oriiiigi',  yellow,  ami  pale 
<j;r<'en,  in  a  way  that  n<»  Ktiropcan 
leaves  liave  learned  to  imitate;  ami 
the  niiiiiles  are  often  atlundant  i>nongh 
to  give  u  general  tone  oF  brilliant 
coloring  to  an  entire  latnlseape  sueb 
us  we  seldom  see  in  onr  damper  and 
mistier  Knglan<l.  liesides.  tins  change 
froH)  Summer  to  Autumn  comes  on 
more  rapidly  there  than  with  us:  a 
few  consecutive  nights  of  dry,  clear 
frost  alter  the  whole  face  of  nature, 
as  if  by  magic,  from  green  to  gold 
and  purj)le,  in  a  fashion  which  would 
be  impossible  with  <»ur  alow,  long- 
drawn,  changeable  seasons.  Yet,  in 
spite  of  all  this,  I  ani  not  prepared  to 
admit  that  even  on  the  St.  Lawrence 
or  the  Pludson  you  can  often  see  any- 
thing more  brilliant  in  its  way  than 
the  yearly  September  display  on  our 
Thames  about  Nuneham  and  Pang- 
bourne,  or  the  Founder's  Tower  at 
Mac  ^alcn,  clad  from  pinnacle  to  base 
in  uson  Virginia  creeper  during 
th  fortnigiit  of  Octobei-  term. 

Such  outbursts  of  pure  warm  color 
are  certaiidy  rarer  here  than  in 
Amei'ica ;  but  when  once  seen  they 
enable  one  at  least  to  realize,  if  my 
memory  serves  me  right,  what  C.'ana- 
dian  woodlands  ai"e  like  when  the 
maples  are  set  ablaze  with  red  and 
orange  in  tlie  mellow  evenings  of  that 
too  rare  season,  a  successful  Indian 
Summer. 

It  is  a  curious  phenomenon,  this  an- 
nual fall  of  all  the  leaves  from  almost 
all  the  trees  in  northern  climates ;  and 
yet  use  has  so  dulled  us  to  its  strange- 
ness that  we  seldom  even  think  about 
its  origin  or  meaning  in  any  way. 
Indeed,  until  certain  late  investiga 
tions  of  the  tertiary  floras  by  M.  Sa 
porta,  Mr.  Starkie  Gardiner,  and 
others,  it  is  doubtful  whether  anybody 
had  ever  asked  himself  any  question 
upon  the  subject  at  all.  But  these 
investigations  have  shown  pretty 
clearly  that  deciduous  trees  are  quite 
a  modern  novelty  upon  our  planet, 
things  of  the  last  two  hundred  mil- 
lennia or  80,  entirely  due  to  the  im- 


mense cooli'ig  of  t'.ie  earth's  surface 
which  began  in  tlu;  early  tertiary 
period  and  culminated  in  the  great 
glacial  epu(;h.  They  uro  a  special 
product  of  hard  times  at  the  F'ole, 
like  the  while  i)ears,  the  woolly  rhi 
noceros,  the  nmmmoth  and  the  sn«)W- 
buntings.  In  llu-  tropics  all  the  trees 
are  evergreens,  or  at  least  sutler  no 
regidar  periodical  loss  of  their  foli- 
age; but  in  the  north  we  have  few 
native  ever<j;reei's  except  the  pines 
atid  tirs,  with  their  needle-like  leaves; 
and  the  two  or  three  hardy,  broad 
leaved  exoticr  evergreens  cultivated  in 
our  gardens  or  shrubberies,  such  as 
the  rh(tdodondnuis,  the  laurels  and 
the  bay  trees,  together  with  our  own 
smaller  lu>lly,  box  and  [jrivet,  hardly 
HutHce  to  convey  a  notion  of  the  great 
southern  forest  trees,  clad  all  the  year 
round  in  thick  green,  such  as  the  man- 
goes, the  star-apples  and  the  sand 
boxes.  Up  to  the  beginning  of  the 
tei'tiary  period,  however,  large  ever- 
greens of  what  is  now  the  tropical 
type,  covered  the  whole  ol  the  world, 
!is  far  as  the  very  Poles  themselves. 
Greenland  and  Spitzbergen  then  sup. 
ported  huge  fcu'ests  of  the  same  gen 
eral  character  as  those  which  now 
spread  over  Brazil  an<l  the  Malay 
Archipelago.  But  from  the  first  dawn 
of  the  eocene  onward,  some  combina- 
tion of  astronomical  and  geographical 
causes,  such  as  those  suggested  by 
Dr.  Croll  and  Mr.  A.  l{.  Wallace, 
began  to  produce  a  general  chilling 
of  the  temperature  at  either  Pole. 
Perhaps  the  effect  was  wholly  due,  as 
Dr.  Croll  believes,  to  the  eccentricity 
of  the  earth's  orbit  and  the  precession 
of  the  equinoxes;  perhaps  it  was 
further  aided,  as  Mr.  Wallace  sug- 
gests, by  the  elevation  of  great  moun- 
tain ranges  about  the  polar  regions, 
which  became  nurseries  for  immense 
glaciers,  and  so  supplemented  the  nat- 
ural chilling  due  to  the  cosmical 
cycles.  At  any  rate,  whatever  theory 
we  may  adopt  for  its  explanation,  the 
fact  itself  remains  certain  that  from 
the  eocene  age  up  to  the  glacial  epoch 
the  climate  of  the  earth  grew  steadily 
colder,  the  change  being  of  coarse 


[008J 


VIGJfETTES  PROM  NATURE. 


most  marked  nt  either  Pole,  and  least 
noticeable  in  the  equatorial  district. 

Concomitantly  with  the  steady  de- 
crease of  temperature  thus  forced 
upon  the  earth,  r  new  forest  vegeta- 
tion developed  itself  in  adaptation  to 
the  altered  circumstaiiees.  This  mod- 
ern cold-weatlier  flora  of  course  first 
showed  its  faco  in  the  polar  rogiojis, 
or,  to  speak  more  correctly,  about  the 
North  Pole  Here  tlie  fresh  conditions 
first  made  themselves  felt,  and  here 
all  the  familiar  trees  of  modern  Eng- 
lish woodlands  had  their  generic  ori- 
gin. In  the  eocene  «lays  the  arctic 
flora  was  still  of  a  temperate  or  even 
8ub-tropical  aspect.  But  in  the  mio- 
cene  age  this  temperate  arctic  flora 
was  driven  southward  by  the  advanc- 
ing cold,  Avhile  a  more  strictly  north- 
ern type  of  vegetation  began  to  show 
itself  among  the  hardy  survivors 
which  could  accommodate  themselves 
to  the  chillier  winters  of  the  new 
epoch.  In  the  pliocene  period,  once 
more,  the  arctic  miocene  trees  in- 
vaded northern  and  central  Europe, 
and  a  still  colder  type  appeared  around 
the  Poles.  Finally,  with  the  pleisto- 
cene age,  masses  of  ice  began  to 
occupy  the  North  Pole  itself,  and 
drove  even  the  hardiest  and  most  arc- 
tic vegetation  down  to  the  Mediter- 
ranean basin,  while  England  and  half 
Germany  were  covered  by  the  enor- 
mous sheet  of  permanent  glaciers. 

Now  though  the  conifers,  with  their 
tough  capillary  leaves,  did  not  suffer 
largely  from  the  change,  the  ever- 
green tropical  trees  were  clearly  (juite 
unfitted  for  conditions  such  as  these. 
Their  big  leaves  Ci)uld  do  no  sei-ioua 
work  in  the  way  of  assimilating  car- 
bon from  the  atmosphere  in  the  cold 
and  gloom  of  northern  winters  ;  and 
the  wind  would  only  tear  them  off  by 
thousands  and  waste  the  chlorophyll 
and  starches  laid  up  in  their  tissues. 
To  meet  this  diiHculty  the  modern 
deciduous  oaks,  ashes,  and  elms  were 
developed.  These  trees  do  not  merely 
allow  their  leaves  to  fall  off  with  the 
wind,  but  they  make  actual  provision 
for  such  a  contingency  beforehand. 
Each  leaf-Btalk  is  provided  with  a  row 


of  special  empty  cells,  which  are  so 
constructed  that  as  soon  as  the  leaves 
begin  to  die  they  rot  away,  and  ac~ 
cordingly  let  the  leaf  fall  readily, 
le!i\  ing  a  clean,  dry  scar,  instead  of 
waiting  till  some  violent  storm 
wrenches  them  off,  tearir.o;  the  liviii"- 
tissues  and  wasting  the  sap  by  bleed- 
ing. Moreover,  when  Autumn  comes 
on,  the  living  and  utilizable  material 
in  each  leaf  is  first  withdrawn  into 
the  bark  and  branches,  where  it  is 
stored  up  during  the  Winter  in  order 
to  feed  the  young  leaf-buds  in  the  suc- 
ceeding Spring ;  and  then  the  row  of 
specialized  division-cells  begins  to 
warp,  and  lets  the  now  useless  skeleton 
of  the  blade  drop  off  with  the  wind. 
Those  large-leaved  trees  which  thus 
learned  to  economize  their  stock  of 
food  stuffs  were  alone  able  to  compete 
advantageously  with  the  wiry  and 
tough-skiimed  pines  or  furs ;  and 
thus  many  distinct  families  of  forest 
trees,  such  as  the  maples,  the  oak  and 
beech  tribe,  the  elms,  and  the  apple 
group,  none  of  which  are  at  all 
related  to  one  another,  have  quite 
separately  hit  out  the  very  same  idea. 
Those  which  did  not  hit  it  out  went 
to  the  wall ;  and  indeed  our  existing 
northern  forest  flora  represents,  as  it 
were,  a  mere  fragment  of  the  original 
northern  vegetation — the  few  scat- 
tered species  here  and  there  among  a 
vast  number  which  nianaged  to  adapt 
themselves  to  the  new  and  ungenial 
conditions  of  the  northern  zone. 

It  is  to  this  withdrawal  of  the  green 
coloring  matter  and  the  other  living 
principles  from  the  dying  leaves  that 
we  owe  the  tints  of  Autumn,  as  Mr. 
Sorby  has  carefully  and  minutely  de- 
monstrated. But  it  is  a  suggestive 
and  striking  fact  that  hues  like  these 
should  exist  always  unseen  in  the  very 
structure  of  the  living  plant,  ready  to 
be  developed  at  any  time  by  proper 
selective  or  accidental  circumstances. 
Some  of  the  colors  are  produced  by 
the  oxidation  of  the  green  chloro 
phyll  in  person  ;  others  are  actually 
present  in  the  green  leaf  itself,  though 
completely  masked  during  the  period 
of  vigor  by  the  preponderance  of  the 


TIGNBTTE8  PROM  NATURE. 


[504]  53 


natural  pigment,  which  owes  its  color 
to  a  due  admixture  of  them  all. 
When  we  consider,  however,  that 
colors  like  these  lie  ready  and  waiting 
in  the  tissues  of  every  plant,  showing 
themselves  wherever  chlorophyll  is 
not  present  in  its  most  active  form, 
alike  in  the  young  leaves  or  sprouting 
shoots  of  Spring  and  in  the  dying 
foliage  of  Autumn,  it  is  easior  to  un- 
derstand how  the  beautiful  and 
brilliant  petals  of  flowers  have  been 
developed  by  the  selective  action  of 
insects.  The  red  and  orange  and 
blue  pigments  were  potentially  there 
already ;  the  insects'  part  was  only  to 
seize  upon  and  favor  them  whenever 
special  circumstances  happened  to 
bring  them  out  into  visible  actuality. 


XXII. 


THE  FALL  OF  THE  YEAR. 

Up  on  the  downs  to-day  the  view 
is  dreary  and  gloomy  enough.  A  grey 
mist  hangs  over  the  horizon  to  sea- 
ward, while  inland  the  hollow  combes 
and  rounded  shoulders  of  the  distant 
chalk  range  hardly  stand  out  at  all 
through  the  foggy  air.  Sunlight 
throws  "i^  their  varied  contour  with 
splendid  perspective  depths  of  black 
shadow  ;  but  in  dull  wintry  weather 
like  this,  the  outline  merges  into  a 
single,  unbroken  leaden-blue  line 
against  the  whice  backgi-ound  of  the 
sky.  There  can  be  no  denying  that 
chill  October  is  really  upon  u».  Yet 
even  now  a  few  patche!=  of  color  still 
remain — some  golden  heads  of  the 
autumnal  hawkbit  on  the  open,  some 
straggling  bushes  of  the  dwarf  furze 
upon  the  glen- sides,  and  a  mass  of 
rich,  foxy-brown  bracken  among  the 
tumbled  and  uneven  rockery  of  the 
undercliff.  The  season  is  not  quite 
so  far  advanced  here  on  the  south 
coast  as  it  was  a  few  days  since 
among  the  dry,  heather-clad  hills  and 
yellow  Autumn  woods  of  North 
Wales.  Every  twenty  miles  south- 
wnrd  tells  at  this  season  of  the  year, 
and  so  the  passion-flowers  are  even 
now  in  blossom  down  here  on  ^he 


trellis-work  of  the  cottage,  with  its 
southerly  aspect,  while  the  trees  and 
creepers  are  fast  growing  leafless 
among  the  windy  hills  of  the  north 
and  the  midlands. 

It  was  Buffon,  that  half-uncon- 
scious predecessor  of  our  modern  evo- 
lutionists, who  first  pointed  out  the 
true  importance  of  these  zones  of 
climate,  from  pole  to  equator,  in  the 
history  of  life  upon  the  earth.  For 
Buffon,  with  all  his  contempt  for 
systematic  classification  and  for  accu- 
rate scientific  knowledge,  was  a  man 
of  that  wide  philosophic  grasp  and 
that  intuitive  insight  which  ai'e  often 
more  valuable  after  all  than  any 
amount  of  capacity  for  remembering 
dry  detail ;  and  he  saw  many  points 
accordingly  which  were  hidden  from 
the  wise  and  prudent  artificial  sys- 
tematists  of  his  time.  Organic  life, 
he  remarked,  must  have  begun  at  the 
Poles ;  for  on  the  surface  of  an  in- 
candescent planet  the  Poles  would  be 
the  first  part  to  cool  down  sufficiently 
to  allow  of  the  conditions  under 
which  alone  life  becomes  possible. 
This  pregnant  idea  has  since  been 
fully  developed  by  later  naturalists. 
Not  only  is  it  true  that  life  as  a  whole 
must '  started  at  its  first  b-^gin- 
ning  iiom  the  Pole,  but  we  now 
know  that  all  fresh  waves  of  fauna  or 
flora  must  in  like  manner  have  set  out 
from  the  self-same  point,  and  occu- 
pied the  earth  by  migration  in  circum- 
polar  zones.  Moreover,  the  great 
centre  of  all  life  was  in  all  probability 
the  North  Pole  alone,  not  the 
South;  for,  since  Mr.  Wallace's 
luminous  researches  on  the  geo- 
graphical distribution  of  animals, 
it  has  become  almost  certain 
that  our  existing  continents  have  been 
steadily  growing  up  for  a  vast  period 
of  time,  and  that  our  existing  oceans 
have  been  oceans  and  nothing  else 
ever  since  the  aqueous  vapor  of  our 
planet  first  condensed  and  cooled  into 
water.  Hence  it  follows  that  the 
South  Pole  has  always  been  isolated 
in  the  midst  of  an  enormous  stretch 
of  ocean,  while  the  North  Pole  has 
always  been  the  point  from  which  the 


y 

.v^-^ 


54  [505] 


TIGNETTE8  FROM  NATURE. 


great  land  massea  of  Europe,  Asia, 
Africa,  and  America  have  radiated 
southward.  In  botli  hemispheres  we 
find  the  land  widening  out  towards 
I'lie  North  Pole,  but  tapering  away 
towards  the  South  ;  and  we  know  that 
South  America  and  South  Africa 
were  till  recently  isolated  outliers  of 
their  respective  continents,  while  Aus- 
tralia remains  an  isolated  outlier  of 
Asia  to  ihe  present  day.  Thus  every 
great  wave  of  animal  or  plant  popu- 
lation must  have  set  out  always  from 
the  North  Pole,  must  have  spread 
southward  in  concentric  circles,  and 
must  have  but  slowly  reached  the  out- 
lying southern  extremities.  Hence, 
generally  speaking,  we  may  expect  to 
find  the  newest  and  most  modern 
types  in  the  great  northern  conti- 
nents, and  the  oldest  and  most  archaic 
types  in  the  tapering  southern  penin- 
sulas and  islands. 

The  fact  is,  however,  it  is  now  Au- 
tumn with  the  whole  of  our  planet, 
itnd  the  last  great  cold  spell  from 
which  the  northern  hemisphere  suf- 
fered— the  glacial  epoch — has  some- 
what interfered  with  the  literal  truth 
of  this  rough  generalization.  Climat- 
ically speaking,  our  earth  has  seen  its 
l)est  day.  We  are  now  growing  colder 
from  age  to  age,  and  we  niay  look 
forward  in  the  distant  future  to 
.in  absolute  Winter  extending  over 
the  whole  globe,  when  its  sur- 
face will  be  as  dead  and  chantje- 
less  as  that  of  the  moon  actually  is 
before  our  own  eyes.  Life,  indeed, 
viewed  cosmicnlly,  is  but  a  superficial 
phenomenon  produced  by  arrested 
polar  radiation  on  the  outer  crust  of  a 
cooling  nebula,  and  it  will  disap])ear 
i-ome  day,  from  this  earth  at  least, 
amid  the  universal  chilling  of  an  ex- 
liausted  world.  Luckily  for  us,  how- 
(ver — or  unluckily  if  the  pessimists 
will  have  it  so — the  Winter  has  not  so 
far  really  set  in,  and  we  are  as  yet 
only  at  the  premonitary  stage  of  full 
Autumn.  The  time  is  still  recent,  as  i 
jisti'onomers  and  geologists  reckon  dis- ! 
lance  or  nearness,  when  the  Poles  i 
;V'ere  warm  enough  to  support  a  thor- 1 
f  ughly   tropical  type  of  life.     Trees  ' 


distantly  like  those  of  Java  and  Bra- 
zil, animals  faintly  suggesting  those 
of    Central    Africa    and  the   Malay 
Archipelago,  then  formed  the  fauna 
and  llora  t)f  the  extreme  north.     But 
just  as  the  Poles  had  been  the  earliest 
part  to  cool  from  incandescence  into 
a  firm  crust,  so,    when    worse  times 
came,  they  were  the  earliest  part  to 
cool  from   trop'cal  heat   to  what  we 
European  human  beings  complacently 
describe  as  temperate,  and  from  tem- 
perate again  to    arctic.     And  as  life 
had  first  developed  at  the  North  Pole, 
thunce  to  spread  southward,  so  now 
the  new  types  of  life,  adapted  to  the 
altered    conditions,  were    each    first 
evolved  at  the  North  Pole,  and  wero 
each    jiushed    southward    one    after 
another,  as  the  cold  grew  intenser,  in 
concentric  rings,  so  that    the    arctic 
fauna  in  one  age  becomes  the  parent 
of  the  North  European  fauna  in   the 
next  age,  of  the  Mediterranean  fauna 
in    the    succeeding  one,  and   of    the 
Southern  fauna  in  the  epoch  after  that 
again.     So  long  as  life  remained  pos- 
sible at  the  Pole  at  all,  it  was  almost 
absolutely  true  that  the  polar  plaiits 
and    animals   represented    the    most 
modern    and    most    highly    evolved 
types  at   that   moment    living    upon 
earth.     Spitzbergen,  in  fact,  then  led 
:  the  very  van  of  progressive  evolution. 
But   since  the  planetary    Autumn 
:  has  thoroughly  set  in,  this  principle 
has  ceased  to  be  quite  true,  and  has 
'  been  to  some  extent  reversed  by  the 
i  occurrence  of  that   great  premature 
;  cold    spell,  the   glacial    epoch.     To- 
;  wards  the  close  of  the  tertiary  period, 
,  a   combination  of    astronomical  and 
geological  causes  set  up  a  long  inter- 
!  val  of  intense   cold  in  the   northern 
I  hemisphere,  which  made   all  life  im- 
I  possible,  not  only  at  the  Pole  itself, 
'  but  even  as  far  south  as  London,  Ber- 
lin, New  York  and  Chicago.    During 
that   interval  all   livino;  things  were 
necessarily  driven   towards  the  sub 
tropical  and  equatorial  regions  ;  and 
the  middle  of  the  earth  thus  became 
for  a  while  the  seat  of  the  richest  and 
most  advanced  fauna  and  flora.  Some 
seventy    or    eighty    thousand  years 


VIGNETTES  FROM  NATURE. 


[SOB]  5.1 


since,  if  we  may  tmgt  Dr.  Croll, 
backed  by  the  almost  unanimous 
opinion  of  tiie  greatest  scientific  au- 
thorities, these  unfavorablo  astronom- 
ical conditions  ended,  and  the  vast 
glacial  sheet  cleared  away  from  the 
face  of  the  northern  hemisphere,  at 
least  below  the  latitude  of  Greenland. 
But.  as  Mr.  Wallace  believes,  the  ge- 
ological conditions  remained  unal- 
tered ;  and  so,  instead  of  the  Pole 
becoming  once  more  habitable,  it  still 
continues  to  be  enveloped  in  perpet- 
ual snow.  From  that  time  forward 
the  exiled  plants  and  animals,  which 
had  been  driven  south  by  the  ad- 
vancing cold,  have  begun  to  migrate 
northward  once  more  and  to  re-occu- 
py the  deserted  plains  of  temperate 
Asia  aii<l  America. 

In  the  eastern  hemisphere,  however, 
the  conditions  have  been  unfavorable 
to  their  rapid  northward  progress.  In 
Asia,  the  great  central  region  is  occu- 
pied by  the  snowy  mountain  ranges 
of  the  Himalayas  and  the  Hindu 
Kush,  and  by  the  high  table  land  of 
Thibet,  which  cut  off  the  cold  Sibe- 
rian i)lains  from  the  rich  fauna  and 
flora  of  the  Indian  region  ;  in  Europe, 
the  Mediterranean  and  the  Caucasus 
similarly  divide  us  from  Africa,  which 
is  itself  cut  almost  in  two,  biologically 


speaking,  "by  the  practically  lifeless 
district  of  Sahara.  Hence  it  is  only 
in  America  that  the  fauna  and  Hora 
have  been  free  to  make  their  way 
back,  unimpeded,  from  Carolina  and 
Georgia  to  New  England  and  the  St. 
Lawrence  basin.  Even  here,  the  re- 
peopling  has  been  far  from  complete: 
while  in  isolated  portions  of  Euroue, 
like  Great  Britain,  and  still  more 
markedly  Ireland,  where  the  fauna 
and  flora  had  hardly  time  to  pene- 
trate before  the  submergence  which 
turned  them  into  islands,  the  compar- 
ative poverty  of  life  is  very  notice- 
able. Nevertheless,  the  temperate 
types  have  everywhere  driven  out  the 
])o!ai'  species  which  preceded  them, 
except  on  the  very  summits  of  the 
l)rineipal  moimtains.  Near  the  top 
of  Mount  Washington,  the  highest 
peak  in  the  Eastern  States,  there  lin- 
ger even  now  some  few  butterflies  of 
a  s[)ecies  which  is  not  found  again 
till  we  reach  the  arctic  regions. 
Their  ancestors  were  stranded  there 
by  the  receding  glaciers,  Avhen  all  the 
rest  of  their  kind  were  driven  north- 
wards ;  and  there  alone  they  have 
been  able  to  hold  their  own  against 
the  better  adapted  southern  kinds 
which  came  to  occupy  the  surround- 
ing country. 


CONTENTS. 


I.  Fallow  Deer 

II.  Sedge   and  Woodbbush 

III.  Red  Campion  and  White 

IV.  BUTTEUKLY-IIUNTING  BEGINS 

V.  Red  Ca.mpion  Again 
VI.  The  Hedgeiiocs's  Hole  . 
VII.  On  Musbtjky  Castle 
VIII.  A  Big  Fossil  Bone 
IX.  Vekonica 
X.  Gueldeu  Kobe 
XI.  Thb  IIbkon's  Haunt     , 


PAGE. 

,         1 

xu. 

.         t 

XII  [. 

.         (> 

XIV. 

.      8 

XV. 

,    10 

XVI. 

.    12 

XVII. 

.   l."i 

XVIII. 

.    17 

XTX. 

.  20 

XX. 

.  23 

XXI. 

.  86 

XXII. 

A  Bed  op  Nettles      .        .  '2V 

L00SE8T11U<'K  AND  Pl.MPKRNEL    30 

The  Caup  Pond  .        .  .  'i'6 

A  Welsh  Roadside     .  .  36 

Seaside  Weeds     .         .  .38 

A  Mountain  Takn       .  .  40 

Wild  Thyme        .         .  .43 

The  Donkey's  Ancestors  .  45 

Beside  the  Cromlech.  .  48 

TuE  Fall  of  the  Leap  .  50 

The  Fall  op  ^he  Year  .  53 


